Kristeva, Julia

  Kristeva criticizes "classical" semiotics on the claim that it cannot deal with desire, play or transgression from social code: "The sceince of linguistics has no way of apprehending anything in language which belongs not with the social contract but with play, pleasure or desire" (Kristeva 26).  She criticizes the view that the speaking subject is a "transcendental ego" detached from its history, its unconscious, and its body that "underlies any and every predicative synthesis" (Kristeva 27).
    According to Kristeva, the speaking subject is a divided subject.  In keeping with the views of both Freud and Lacan, she proposes that the speaking subject consists of a conscious mind containing social constraints such as family structures and modes of production and an unconscious mind consisting of bio-physiological processes, which are what Freud previously referred to as 'drives.'  She proposes a "new" semiotics, which she terms semiology or semanalysis, in which meaning is conceived of as a signifying process rather than a sign system.  Semiology allows for the theory of the split subject - a socially-shaped biological being.  Semiology is based on two concepts -genotext and phenotext.  The genotext is the body of the bio-physiological process constrained by the social code, and it is not reducible to the language system.  The genotext exists within the phenotext, which is the perceivable signifying system.

Bibliography

FRENCH BOOKS
Le feminin et le sacre. Co-authored with Catherine Clément. Paris: Stock, 1998.
Le temps sensible: Proust et l'expérience littéraire, Paris: Gallimard, 1994.
Les Nouvelles maladies de l'ame, Paris: Libraire Artheme Fayard, 1993.
Soleil noir: Depression et mélancolie, Paris: Gallimard, 1987.
Histoires d'amour, Edtions Denoël: Paris, 1983.
Pouvoirs de l'horreur, Paris: Seuil, 1980.
Polylogue, Paris: Seuil, 1977.
La Révolution du langage poétique, Paris: Seuil, 1974.

BOOKS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature, Trans. by Ross Guberman, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
New Maladies of the Soul Trans. by Ross Guberman, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Black Sun Trans. by Leon Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Tales of Love Trans. by Leon Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
Revolution in Poetic Language, Trans. by Margaret Waller, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Powers of Horror, Trans. by Leon Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Desire in Language, Edited by Leon Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

ARTICLES
"A New Type of Intellectual: The Dissident," in The Kristeva Reader, Edited by Toril Moi, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986; originally published in 1977.
"Julia Kristeva in conversation with Rosiland Coward," Desire, ICA Documents, 1984, p. 22-27.



Secondary Sources
de Nooy, Juliana. Derrida, Kristeva, and the Dividing Line: An Articulation of Two Theories of Difference. Garland, 1998.
Huntington, Patricia. Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger, Irigaray.
Julia Kristeva 1966-96: Aesthetics, Politics, Ethics. (special issue of the journal Parallax out of the University of Leeds, UK) 1998.
Lechte, John and Mary Zournazi, ed. After the Revolution: On Kristeva. 1998. ISBN 1-876017-37-6.
O'Grady, Kathleen, ed. Julia Kristeva: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources in French and English: 1966-1996. 1997.
Oliver, Kelly, ed. Ethics, Politics, and Difference in Julia Kristeva's Writings. 1993.
Oliver, Kelly. "Julia Kristeva's Feminist Revolutions," Hypatia a journal of feminist philosophy, 8:3, summer 1993, p. 94-114.
Oliver, Kelly, ed. The Portable Kristeva. 1997.
Oliver, Kelly. Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-Bind. 1993.
Reineke, Martha J. Sacrificed Lives: Kristeva on Women and Violence. 1997.
Smith, Anna. Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement. 1997.
Smith, Anne-Marie. Julia Kristeva: Speaking the Unspeakable. Pluto Press, 1998.