Julia Kristeva’s Mallarmé: From Fetishism to the Theatre-Book

Abstract

This second chapter engages with Julia Kristeva’s reading of Mallarmé in her 1974 work Revolution in Poetic Language. This chapter offers the first extended analysis of this work’s long and detailed study of Mallarmé, and introduces Kristeva’s unique interpretation of such key works as Prose (Pour des Esseintes) and Un Coup de dés. It also presents the first English-language engagement of any length with the third — and longest — chapter of Revolution in Poetic Language, ‘The State and Mystery’. The chapter argues that Kristeva’s reading culminates in a critique of Mallarmé’s poetry’s content, which covers over the radicality of its form, thus leading to the suppression of the revolutionary political power contained in his work.