Kristeva, Julia

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The intellectual overview of a political science genius

Hannah Arendt
Julia Kristeva
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Strangers to Ourselves

ASIN: 0231121024

Amazon.com

Julia Kristeva's Hannah Arendt brings together two of the best minds in 20th-century philosophy; two who are especially noteworthy because they are visionary women in a field long dominated by men. Appropriately, the book is, in part, a tribute to Arendt, one of a series of looks at female genius. Kristeva brings her considerable scholarly arsenal, which includes linguistics, literary criticism, philosophy, feminism, aesthetics, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis. In particular, her psychoanalytic bent makes for an incisive look at Arendt because she was "gripped from the start by that unique passion in which life and thought are one.... [She] consistently put life--both life itself and life as a concept to be analyzed--at the center of her work."

Arendt is certainly one of the 20th century's brightest intellectual luminaries. Penning The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem, she wove her accounts of philosophy with a unique penchant for narrative and personal reflection, vivified by her extraordinary life. Throughout this biography, Kristeva plies Arendt's trade, using Arendt's life to illuminate her thought. By turns she examines Arendt's use of narrative, her ratiocinations on Jewish-ness and anti-Semitism, and her political philosophy. Kristeva's insightfulness in this volume will help ensure her a place in the canon alongside Arendt. --Eric de Place

Book Description

Twenty-five years after her death, we are still coming to terms with the controversial figure of Hannah Arendt. Interlacing the life and work of this seminal twentieth-century philosopher, Julia Kristeva provides us with an elegant, sophisticated biography brimming with historical and philosophical insight.

Centering on the theme of female genius, Hannah Arendt emphasizes three features of the philosopher's work. First, by exploring Arendt's critique of Saint Augustine and her biographical essay on Rahel Varnhagen, Kristeva accentuates Arendt's commitment to recounting lives and narration. Second, Kristeva reflects on Arendt's perspective on

Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the "banality of evil." Finally, the biography assesses Arendt's intellectual journey, placing her enthusiasm for observing both social phenomena and political events in the context of her personal life.

Drawing on fragments of Arendt's most intimate correspondence with her longtime lover Martin Heidegger and her husband Heinrich Blucher, excerpts from her mother's "Unser Kind" (a diary tracking Hannah's formative years), and passages from Arendt's philosophical writings, Kristeva presents a luminous story. With a thorough thematic index and bibliographical references, Hannah Arendt is a major breakthrough in the understanding of an essential thinker.

Customer Reviews:

The intellectual overview of a political science genius.......2003-11-07

It has been a long time since I went to a baseball game, but trying to keep track of the intellectual action in the biography of Hannah Arendt by Julia Kristeva reminded me of the game. Eventually, I even thought of a song, "Catfish" by Bob Dylan (Words by Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy) recorded on July 28, 1975, an outtake from the album "Desire" that was finally released in a three-CD package called "The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 [rare and unreleased] 1961-1991." There was once a pitcher called Catfish Hunter, million dollar man, and Dylan's chorus said, "Nobody can throw the ball Like Catfish can." I have had the words since "The Songs of Bob Dylan" was released in 1976, but I didn't hear the song until 1991. Having an English translation from 2001 of a feminist biography of a political scientist of the mid-twentieth century captures the intellection activity that interests me about as well as "Catfish" captures the action of a baseball game.

Lazy stadium night, Catfish on the mound,
"Strike three" the umpire said,
Batter have to go back and sit down.

There are three chapters in HANNAH ARENDT, and the third has 219 notes. Basic statistics on how much Julia Kristeva is merely educating herself in public by providing a reading from Arendt's books might be obtained by counting the Ibid.s. Counting backwards, I found 133 Ibid.s in the notes for Chapter 3, including my favorite note:

"99. "Letter to the Romans 7:21, drafted between 54 and 58 a.d., cited in ibid., p. 64." (p. 268).

A lot of the books I read lately keep trying to tell me when the Bible was written, but I never noticed it in a note before. Usually my favorite notes are about Nietzsche, like:

"123. Ibid., p. 165, citing Nietzsche, THE GAY SCIENCE, no. 310"

"126. Concerning the `forgetting' that Nietzsche revives see p. 237; and Paul Ricoeur, paper presented at the Hannah Arendt Conference at the Grande Bibliotheque de France, December 6, 1997."

"128. Ibid., pp. 169-70, citing Nietzsche, THE WILL TO POWER, no. 585 A, pp. 316-19."

`131. LM, "Willing," p. 172, citing Nietzsche, THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA, pt. 3, "Before Sunrise." '

`187. Ibid., citing Nietzsche, "The Use and Abuse of History," pp. 6, 7.'

"189. Ibid., citing Nietzsche, THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS, p. 61"

`192. Ibid., pp. 63, 72-73 ("even in old Kant: the categorical imperative reeks of cruelty").'

Nietzsche wrote such things about Kant, and it is a bit difficult to imagine that Kristeva and Arendt would associate such ideas with the great weight of the past if Nietzsche hadn't made this connection first. Understanding philosophy is a process that can be compared to intellectually building a rehash of old, familiar plays, as if it is about something like a baseball game, which has an umpire who gets to decide when an easy pop fly is an infield fly rule call that makes the batter out, but the umpire does not have time to say anything until after it is all over when a triple play picks off the runners before they have a chance to tag up if the pitcher ducks under a line drive that gets caught right on second base before anyone has time to react, but a quick shortstop snagged the ball out of the air and flipped it to first in the only instant in which that could happen. Kristeva is capable of interpreting political science as an activity best understood in terms of the philosophy of Nietzsche:

"To the `identical will' that forges the solidarity of a group, Arendt contrasts the way men who are connected to one another through a mutual promise `act in concert.' These men dispose of the future as though it were the present, and they live together in the miraculous enlargement of what Nietzsche called the `memory of the Will,' which is what distinguishes human life from animal life. As Arendt evokes Nietzsche's concept, she hears only the joyful touches of the superman and denotes not a trace of Nietzsche's disdainful tone." (p. 236).

Still counting backward, I find 102 Ibid.s in the notes for Chapter 2 and only 52 Ibid.s in the notes for Chapter 1. The Introduction only had two notes, on a wide variety of topics, but both related to the nature of "genius." When political opinion surveys offer a few sample views to encompass the political orientation of the great mass of the population, only a genius could be expected to have a ready answer to questions like "Will mothers become our only safeguard against the wholesale automation of human beings?" (p. xiii). The Introduction actually seems more suited for a triple biography, as "The three women who are the subject of this work" on page xv includes two women who are hardly mentioned in the three main chapters of HANNAH ARENDT. It does not add much to understanding this book to also learn "that Melanie Klein devoted herself to studying decompensation." (p. xvii). But in considering who else has been brilliant, it pays to have some comic relief. Among the French, who must understand comedy as well as any people anywhere, it might even be popular to declare:

Book Description

In November 1996, Catherine Clément and Julia Kristeva began a correspondence exploring the subject of the sacred. In this collection of those letters Catherine Clément approaches the topic from an anthropologist's point of view while Julia Kristeva responds from a psychoanalytic perspective. Their correspondence leads them to a controversial and fundamental question: is there anything sacred that can at the same time be considered strictly feminine?

The two voices of the book work in tandem, fleshing out ideas and blending together into a melody of experience. The result is a dialogue that delves into the mysteries of belief -- the relationship between faith and sexuality, the body and the senses -- which, Clément and Kristeva argue, women feel with special intensity.

Although their discourse is not necessarily about theology, the authors consider the role of women and femininity in the religions of the world, from Christianity and Judaism to Confucianism and African animism. They are the first to admit that what they have undertaken is "as impossible to accomplish as it is fascinating." Nevertheless, their wide-ranging and exhilarating dialogue succeeds in raising questions that are perhaps more important to ask than to answer.

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very sweet
An Interesting Love Theory

Tales of Love (European Perspectives)
Julia Kristeva
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

-- Choice

Customer Reviews:

very sweet.......2004-01-18

I read this book from start to finish and just couldn't get enough of it. A friend of mine in college gave it to me even though i'm not really an avid reader like she is. It kept me up many a night. So check it out. Also check out this other book she gave me called "Tales of love, ugliness and stars under the sea." Also very awesome. It's more poetic stuff, but i found it equally moving.

An Interesting Love Theory.......2000-06-05

This book picks up Western love as main theme and analyzes its both diachronic and synchronic aspects. In the first part, Kristeva shows her theory of love as the theory of psychoanalysis. It is very interesting here that her attention is concentrated on transference in psychoanalysis. Then, with this theory of love, we can read histories of Western love from Plato, the Bible, Narcissus, to St. Thomas and heroes and heroines in love stories such as Don Juan, Romeo and Juliet, and Mary. These histories and stories are in harmony with the next part in which Kristeva analyzes discourses of love in texts of Troubadour, Jeanne Guyon, Baudelaire, Stendhale, and Bataille. Reading here, we can learn what Western love has ever been, which enables us to think about modern love. Finally, Kristeva mentions to the crisis of love, which emerges now because of the abolition of psychic space and discusses psychoanalytic role, especially, transferenceÂfs one. Kristeva shows various aspects of Western love as a mosaic of histories, stories, and texts, which are connected logically each other by psychoanalysis and the theory of love. Therefore, this book has a very clear composition. This is why I like this book. Another reason is that I am interested in KristevaÂfs idea which differentiates Western love from Japanese one. I think that she also shows how to approach Japanese love which has been thought to be changed dynamically these years, not only Western one.

Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art

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Beyond Lacan and Freud: Language and Psychoanalysis

Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art
Julia Kristeva
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0231048076

Book Description

-- Contemporary Literature

Desire in Language traces the path of an investigation, extending over a period of ten years, into the semiotics of literature and the arts. But the essays of Julia Kristeva in this volume, though they often deal with literature and art, do not amount to either "literary criticism" or "art criticism." Their concern, writes Kristeva, "remains intratheoretical: they are based on art and literature in order to subvert the very theoretical, philosophical, or semiological apparatus."

Probing beyond the discoveries of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Roman Jakobson and others, Julia Kristeva proposes and tests theories centered on the nature and development of the novel, and on what she has defined as a signifying practice in poetic language and pictural works. Desire in Language fully shows what Roman Jakobson has called Kristeva's "genuine gift of questioning generally adopted 'axioms,' and her contrary gift of releasing various 'damned questions' from their traditional question marks."

Customer Reviews:

Beyond Lacan and Freud: Language and Psychoanalysis.......2000-11-06

In this book Kristeva takes on the issues of language and psychoanalysis, expanding upon Lacan's views on desire and language. (Lacan said: All speech is demand, the demand for love). Kristeva is considered a genius in her field, and highly respected in France (where all this work goes on nowadays). Here she is presented in translation so that the English-reading world can enjoy her work.

The interest in such theories of language, semiotics, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis is slim in the English speaking world, and this is unfortunate. Not enough scholars of language look to Lacan and Kristeva, but they should. The text is difficult, and even more so in translation, but it is worth struggling through. However, for the reader with little background in the subject matter, penetrating Kristeva's work may be almost impossible without guidance.

Book Description

-- Elaine Showalter

Customer Reviews:

Changed my life.......2002-10-17

This is one of my most cherished volumes of critical theory. Any self-respecting lit student should own this tome, and read it carefully. Many useful pieces for different scenarios.

A deep look into language, religion and..........2000-09-12

...abjection (If you also read 'Powers of Horror' by Kristeva) Quite comprehensive altough it would be hard to make a choice in the work of Kristeva. Kristeva's work focuses heavily on semiotics and women's role in politics and religion. Many of the theories will stir the soul, especially 'Stabat Mater' if you grew up forced into any european or western dogma. 'Women's Time' is a good possible evaluation of women and politics. Freud gets thrown into this in a very different manner than one expects, which leaves us to wonder, is Kristeva supporting the old 'Dr.' or not?

Celebrating Language and Thought.......2000-05-27

The Kristeva Reader is a good, even great, introduction to the work of Julia Kristeva. Some of Kristeva's most important works are brilliantly exerpted in readable prose by Toril Moi. Lovers of linguistics, rhetoric, literary theory, and psychology will find Kristeva's work compelling. One interesting aspect of the text is that it offers the reader a glimpse into the creative process. In an early essay, "Word, Dialogue, and Novel," Kristeva responds to the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin. Her later essay, "Revolution in Poetic Language," shows the evolution of Kristeva's language theory. Unfortunately, in order to make Kristeva accessible, Moi had to make some difficult choices in her editing. A serious scholar will undoubtedly find herself looking for the complete essays in another text.

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (European Perspectives Series)

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Difficult but worthwhile, ohmy!
Uncanny...astonishing...

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (European Perspectives Series)
Julia Kristeva
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

-- Paul de Man

Customer Reviews:

Difficult but worthwhile, ohmy!.......2005-03-10

Don't be abjected even further than you already are, read this book and allow Kristeva's language to take you on a hallucinatory journey to the limits of symbolization. The act of reading this book can be, at times, an excersize in facing/coping with abjection. If you're patient, go slow, and finally understand thirty percent of this book, you'll be leagues ahead of most intellectuals out there.

Uncanny...astonishing..........1999-05-27

Kristeva rules... To everyone who has some interest in the ABJECT matter, here's the Bible! Uncanny...

Revolution in Poetic Language (European Perspectives Series)

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Theory as a unleashed adventure
I Have to Raise the Rating!!!
Huge - An Important and Rewarding Book
Empty waffle

Revolution in Poetic Language (European Perspectives Series)
Julia Kristeva
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

-- Alice Jardine, Harvard University

Customer Reviews:

Theory as a unleashed adventure.......2007-02-24

In this great book, you will find a whirled stairway to the very innards of that stirring and shaking inquiry called theory. From Saussure to Husserl, from Plato to Freud, and taking on Chomsky, Frege, Hjelmslev and las but not least, Lacan, Kristeva undertakes a criticism which is that of the two most troubling concepts in the western thought: the subject and the sign.
In order to a new and, more and foremost, springing overture to come about, this French psychoanalyst and critic penetrates in the very core of the more intricated authors who built his theories within the sing and the subject; a sign and a subject Kristeva tears apart from the confortable room that eiher in structuralism (with Saussure and Hjelmslev, but also with Noam Chomsky) as in fenomenology (with Husserl)they reside, and finds out the semiotic, this motilities drives whiches allow a freer subject to show up in the very symbolism of language and, even with no destroy it, disrupt it from within, taking over the symbolic whereby all the socials constraints burst into the individual.
Thus, we have in this Etrangere (as Barthes named her) one of the most creative and, hence, one of the most revolutionaries thought the twentieth century give us.

I Have to Raise the Rating!!!.......2005-08-06

I stumbled across the three-star average for this and was appalled. Of course, it is based on one person giving a poor toss-off review and another person giving a positive review, still a toss-off. I identify with what the latter reviewer is doing here. Amazon reviews cannot do this work justice. You have to go soak this in for yourself. All I can say is that it is as life-changing as theory gets. All the rest of us can dream of being so revolutionary and lucid as Kristeva here. That is the use of this book in this era. An important use at that.

Huge - An Important and Rewarding Book.......1999-09-08

The previous reviewer clearly did not understand this intricate and admittedly difficult work in the least - it is certainly NOT an example of the "emperor has no clothes" syndrome. It is, however, a challenging and complicated work that presumes a good deal of exposure to continental philosophy (especially the phenomonologies of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger) and Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis. Kristeva does an impresive and convincing - as well as constructive - job of tying together these overlapping philosophical/ideolgical traditions and ties them into notions of how a subject comes to exist as such in and through a world of language... Going behind the mis-en-abime of Lacan and beyond the linguistic monism of postsrtucturalism, Kristeva gives a living, breathing account of these different themes (of which the previous reviewer seem utterly unaware - but then again, philosophy can be hard)....more later...

Empty waffle.......1999-04-03

This book is an exmaple of the "new emperor clothes" effect. Only the 'clever' people can 'understand' it, and other people are afraid to say that don't undertsand, because then they will not be regarded clever.

Julia Kristeva (Routledge Critical Thinkers)

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Julia Kristeva (Routledge Critical Thinkers)
Noelle Mcafee
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415250099

Book Description

One of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century, Julia Kristeva has been driving forward the fields of literary and cultural studies since the 1960s. This volume is an accessible, introductory guide to the main themes of Kristeva's work, including her ideas on:
*semiotics and symbolism
*abjection
*melancholia
*feminism
*revolt.
McAfee provides clear explanations of the more difficult aspects of Kristeva's theories, helpfully placing her ideas in the relevant theoretical context, be it literary theory, psychoanalysis, linguistics, gender studies or philosophy, and demonstrates the impact of her critical interventions in these areas.
Julia Kristeva is the essential guide for readers who are approaching the work of this challenging thinker for the first time, and provides the ideal opportunity for those with more knowledge to re-familiarize themselves with Kristeva's key terms.

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A difficult read

Strangers to Ourselves
Julia Kristeva
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0231071574

Book Description

This book is concerned with the notion of the "stranger" -the foreigner, outsider, or alien in a country and society not their own- as well as the notion of strangeness within the self -a person's deep sense of being, as distinct from outside appearance and their conscious idea of self.

Kristeva begins with the personal and moves outward by examining world literature and philosophy. She discusses the foreigner in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, and in the literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the twentieth century. She discusses the legal status of foreigners throughout history, gaining perspective on our own civilization. Her insights into the problems of nationality, particularly in France are more timely and relevant in an increasingly integrated and fractious world.

Customer Reviews:

A difficult read.......2001-01-29

The most interesting sections of this work are the earliest chapters; Kristeva seems to run out of steam and stop abruptly once she begins to discuss foreignness and strangeness in contemporary culture. The writing is also very abstract (perhaps more so because it is a translation); this particular book is probably only interesting to a student of literature who is critically concerned with the figure of the Stranger in fiction and legends. I don't recommend picking this book up simply out of curiousity.

Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (European Perspectives: a Series in Social Thought and Cultural Ctiticism)

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Billy Us
A different approach to depression. A "must read."
An energetic and exhaustive study of the blues.

Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (European Perspectives: a Series in Social Thought and Cultural Ctiticism)
Julia Kristeva
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0231067062

Customer Reviews:

Billy Us.......2003-05-11

Kristeva's <Black Sun> is definitely worth a read. While staking a claim for the salubrious effects of psychoanalysis, the author freshly details art's engagement with melancholy and depression. The first chapter or two will make rough going for the reader who is not amused by the lexicon of psychoanalysis. But even readers with a literary intolerance of that sort will find the third chapter on feminine depression sensitively written and thoughtfully invested with human presence. The chapters on art and artists with melancholia make generally excellent reading. The most brief of the chapters, "Beauty: The Depressive Other's Realm," provides a soaring inauguration of the author's poetic and psychoanalytic approaches to the madness and melancholia among Durer, Nerval, Dostoevsky, and Duras. The chapter on Duras might not bear a discussion of an author familiar to American readers but it is worth reading because it alone of the chapters explicity raises questions concerning politics, expectations, madness and depression. The author investigates the sites she has chosen with great sensitivity and radiant intellect. Scattered clouds will be apparent to those who find psychoanalysis an unsatisfying or capricious methodology of investigation.

A different approach to depression. A "must read.".......2000-10-18

This is a different approach to depression. Too often, our focus has been on the DSM-IV approach, or to the treatment of depression using selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac and Paxil. Very rarely does somebody, let alone a respected psychoanalyst, attempt to explain what it actually *feels* like to experience major depression. This is a writing that gives meaning to depression, and I feel that it helps people and their families understand the experience of depression.

The process of all modalities of psychotherapy involves communication, a dialogue between the therapist and the client. This process draws the client out and is an essential factor in the care of the client. Kristeva emphasizes the "antidepressant qualities of psychoanalysis." While acknowledging the utility of antidepressants in psychotherapy, the function of the linguistic component seeks to emphasize the meaning of the "inconsolable loss" experienced by the depressed patient. To symbolically illustrate the sensation of depression, Kristeva uses great sensativity in drawing on the poetry of Gerard de Nerval, the novels of Doestoyevsky, and Hans Holbein's picture "Dead Christ."

"Dark Sun" had meaning to me because of its emphasis on the *individual* and how he or she feels. We must always emphasize the dignity of the individual in dealing with the depressed.

An energetic and exhaustive study of the blues........1997-11-19

In much the same way that Philippe Aries took the subject of childhood and illuminated it for all time in "Centuries of Childhood," fellow French writer (although Bulgarian-born) and Lacanian psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva examines depression and melancholia. She comes at it from various angles and filters: fine arts, literature, history, philosophy, religion, and of course psychology. She posits psychoanalysis as a (really THE) 'counterdepressant' -- convincingly. This is great highbrow stuff: chapters with titles like"Beauty, the Depressive's Other Realm," and "Life and Death of Speech." Death, suicide, the inevitable gloom resulting from loss of maternal, later erotic, love; all are insightfully discussed -- even rather tenderly. If you're depressed BLACK SUN won't make you more so -- and if you're feeling okay to begin with, it's a terrific scholarly study.

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