Julia Kristeva.

Abstract

The Introduction to this book sets out its aims clearly: to provide readings of Julia Kristeva's most recent works and to review her earlier texts in the light of new directions in her thought. This is a useful and necessary undertaking, since some of the best introductions to her thinking were published just prior to the emergence of her volumes on revolt and on the feminine genius from 2000 onwards. In five chapters, the authors discuss key Kristevan questions of revolution and revolt, ethics, love and spectacle, passing through her theorization of the semiotic, the imaginary, melancholia and her re-figuration of Oedipus. Lechte and Margaroni interrogate her sustained involvement with psychoanalysis, her troubled relation to feminism, her work on semiotics, and her conception of politics. The book concludes with an interview in which Lechte and Kristeva talk about the trajectory of her thought in relation to the various strands of argument that run throughout the text. The most fascinating elements, for me, were Chapters 2 and 5. Chapter 2 focuses on the crisis of the paternal function and is impressive in its explication of Kristeva's return to Oedipus. Margaroni weaves together cogent discussion of Freud, Lacan and Kristeva on the question of identification, and illuminates the complexity of Kristeva's long-standing concern with the father. Chapter 5 explores Kristeva's understanding of the imaginary within what Guy Debord has termed the society of the spectacle. Lechte argues persuasively that Kristeva's work on the imaginary and revolt need to be thought about in relation to one another in order for us to understand the future of our imaginary. The other chapters are largely clear and interesting. Chapter 1 provides a lively opening to the volume through its focus on semiotics and revolution. Chapter 3 centres on Kristeva's psychoanalytic approach to love and melancholia. Chapter 4 is stimulating in the comparative approach to ethics that it proposes by turning to Emmanuel Levinas's work. The comparison with Levinas works best when it is woven into the body of the argument in this chapter. The list of terminological differences on pages 87–89 and the bullet point comparisons on pages 109–114 are rather too elliptical to do justice to the relations and contrasts between the two thinkers. On a publishing note, it would have been helpful to see an overarching rationale for the ‘Live Theory’ series at the beginning of the book. This, however, is not the responsibility of the authors, who have written an engaging text, which should prove to be a valuable addition to the existing range of introductions to Julia Kristeva's work.