Julia Kristeva Research Articles

Proust i zmiana. O konwersyjnych aspektach biografii pisarza

Proust and Change. On Conversion Aspects in the Writer’s Biography Starting with the structuralist and post-structuralist readings of In Search of Lost Time, which perpetuated a certain Proustian myth built around the belief that his life was converted into Text (Roland Barthes, René Girard, Julia Kristeva), the article examines the contemporary discussion on Proust’s biography in relation to an essay by French writer Claude Arnaud. His criticism of the above mentioned myth allows not only to look at the relationship between the life and work of the author of In Search in a new way, but also, above all, it opens new interpretative possibilities that break with the sacralizing view on the writer’s biography and are in line with the contemporary postulates of both the writer’s and the literature’s return to society.

The Semiotic and the Symbolic: The Rejuvenative Effect of Writing in Mary Steele’s “Sonnet, 1795”

This paper aims to examine the eighteenth-century British poet, Mary Steele’s “Sonnet, 1795” in terms of the recuperative power of the act of writing and the relationship between the semiotic and the symbolic. The study suggests that the sonnet serves as the poetic testament to the symbolic and the real life of the historical author who aims to manage her emotional suffering and mental agony via the therapeutic act of writing. The female author has a confrontation with what is to be repressed on the symbolic through the poetic production on the semiotic that bears a witness to her traumatic experiences and physical losses. Through negation and sublimation, the author attains to order her chaotic cognitive and affective states and develop an awareness about the subconsciousness and what psychologically ails her. Therefore, she does not intend to improve her poetic abilities and self-actualize as an aspiring author being in search of a feminine sublime, but rather seeks refuge against the symbolic and applies poetry as a therapeutic device and a way of escaping from the reality. Within this context, there is a correlation between the symbolic and the semiotic, between the authorial interest in poetry and the inner motives of the female poet. Against this background, the study employs the theory of Julia Kristeva regarding the liaison between the literary creation and the literary figure, the redemptive power the poetics offers for the authorial persona and the renewing effect of the poetic production.

Al-Uzmah al-Biṭrikiyah fī Riwāyati “Nisyān” Li Ahlām Mustagānemiy (Dirāsah Nisāiyah ‘alā Ḍaui Naẓariyah Julia Kresteva)

This research aims to find out the forms of the patriarchal crisis and the factors that lead to the emergence of the patriarchal problem represented in the novel "Nisyan" by Ahlam Mosteghanemi from the perspective of the feminist theory of Julia Kristeva. The research was qualitative and descriptive. The data sources used for this research are the primary data source in the form of the novel "Nisyan" by Ahlam Mosteghanemi. The secondary source is the supporting books and journals related to the research topic. The method of data collection is reading, translation and writing. The data analysis method uses simulated criticism, that is, by examining the data and then interpreting the narrative representations and facts in the community based on the perspective of Julia Kristeva and concluding. The results of this research are 1. They were classifying the forms of the patriarchal crisis on the body of a mother and an imaginary father. The forms of patriarchal problems categorized in the mother's body are stereotypes, marginalization, sexual harassment, and violence. The forms classified in an imaginary father are Cinderella complex, Oedipus complex, multiple burdens, and the stigma of divorce. 2. The factors that lead to the emergence of the patriarchal crisis are classified in the maternal's body and the imaginary father. Depending on the maternal's body, the patriarchal crisis arises from factors of abjection failure, virginity, reproductive impairment, and body image. Then from the imaginary father, the patriarchal crisis arises from the factors of fixation, lovesick, tomboy, and baby blues

A CONTEMPORIZED MYTH AND REALITY IN CONFLICT: SUNDERLAL’S PSYCHIC IMBALANCE IN LAJWANTI BY RAJINDER SINGH BEDI

Man has always been trying to make sense of the world around him in the light of the narratives around him. Be they the stories given in the religious manuscripts, the myths of gods and goddesses, legends of the heroes, or everyday common moral stories, they are always regarded as a store of human wisdom, setting ideals to be aspired by man. The myth of Ramayana is such an epic narrative which provides the Hindus with perfect definitions of an ideal man i.e., Rama or an ideal woman i.e., Sita. During the partition of India (1947), the scene of Sita’s abduction was repeated thousands of times with the women of the sub-continent. The men, who consequently had to play the role of Rama, failed in most of the cases to re-enact the narrative in the true sense of the myth. One finds many literary representations of men who remained confused about their roles in such situations. Sunderlal, a character in Rajinder Singh Bedi’s short story “Lajwanti”, trying to make sense of the Rama-Sita narrative in the wake of his own circumstances, seems to be totally lost in a world of incomprehension. This research affirms that this short story may be read as a contemporized and appropriated Ramayana through an examination of the mechanics of Bedi’s juxtaposition of a concrete event (Lajwanti’s abduction) with an abstract event (Seeta’s abduction by Rawana) and the psychic aftermath of this juxtaposition which consequently shatters the essentials of Ramayana, the myth. The theoretical support will be sought from the concepts including Julia Kristeva’s concept of “intertextuality”, Harold Bloom’s concept of “poetic misprision” and C.G. Jung’s idea of “archetypes and the collective unconscious” to imply, through a detailed textual analysis, that these myths seem to fail to explain the circumstances and the psychical implications of similar events and situations in contemporary times (for the writer), for instance, the post-partition times of stress depicted in Lajwanti.

THE REFLECTIONS OF MATERNAL PASSIONS AS ASSERTED IN Y. B. MANGUNWIJAYA’S MBAH BENGUK

Today, the discourse of feminism pays more attention to correlations between women, motherhood, and society rather than trying to make women equal to men. Julia Kristeva explains maternal passion as motherhood’s characteristic that relates to the biological state of the sacred womb and the sociological aspect of having children. Mbah Benguk in Y. B. Mangunwijaya’s work tells about a grandmother who takes care of her two disabled grandchildren left by their mother. Mangunwijaya does not attack feminism, yet he underlines the crucial role of the mother. The question is; how is maternal passion reflected in Y. B. Mangunwijaya’s Mbah Benguk? Using the qualitative method, cultural concepts are used to explain the relations between Mangunwijaya’s story and Kristeva’s perspectives. Tensions between biological concepts of woman and sociological ideas of the mother are contradicted. Being a mother shows more passion than emotion as seen in children’s language as a reflection of their mother. Motherhood is the sublimation of a woman’s desire for her children. In conclusion, the story of Mangunwijaya is enriched through Kristeva’s perspective, especially in how a woman should be present as the maternal passion of the womb and the caregiver to her children.

WOMEN’S COMMODIFICATION ON TIKTOK: A SEMIOTIC STUDY OF “ELBOW STICKING' CHALLENGE

The use of social media has grown commonplace in today's culture. Every social media user now has a place to call their own in the digital age. Tiktok is one of the most popular and distinctive social media platforms, and it frequently abuses women through its many 'challenges' for content such as elbow sticking challange. This study takes a non-positivistic approach to the phenomena that occur in the society with a critical interpretive approach. Observations done in TikTok activities and engaging in interactions with TikTok users to be able to understand and uncover the commodification practices of women that occur in TikTok. This study revealed how intertextual the commodification of women in Tiktok was using a critical method that leverages Julia Kristeva's post-modern feminist outlook as a conceptual framework. The findings of this study reveal that the body, women, and culture are interwoven and produce meaning, which overrides earlier meanings by establishing new meanings that exploit Tiktok users, particularly women, which is consistent with media evolution, which also influences value meaning.

The Location of Anxiety

This essay elaborates an alternative to the Freudian and Lacanian conceptions of anxiety by tracing a middle ground between their accounts of linguistic acquisition and object-attachment. Both psychoanalysts overlook the importance of gestural expression while theorizing the eventual reliance on the symbolic with the onset of the Oedipal period. The essay turns to the folk psychology notion of the “theory of mind,” and a specific experiment called the “false belief task” to offer an alternative to how the encroachment of the symbolic is conceptualized in psychoanalytic history. Rather than framing the onset of the symbolic order as a swift entry into language, the essay proposes rethinking it as a process with a longer temporality and a more complex set of expressive behaviors (language, gesture, embodied expression). The comparative account of Freud and Lacan are supported with references to psychoanalysts and scholars of psychoanalysis such as Julia Kristeva, Elizabeth Grosz, and Donald Winnicott.

The Animistic Way: Contemporary Paganism and the Posthuman

This article aims to explore the affinities between contemporary Paganism and the posthuman project in how they approach the non-human natural world. On the one hand, posthumanism explores new ways of considering the notion of humans and how they are linked with the non-human world. On the other hand, Neopaganism expands this reflection to the spiritual domain through its animistic relational sensibility. Both perspectives challenge the modern paradigm where nature and humans are opposed and mutually disconnected. They instead propose a relational ontology that welcomes the “different other.” This integrated relationship between humans and the “other than human” can be understood through the semiotic Chora, a notion belonging to Julia Kristeva that addresses how the subject is not symbolically separated from the world in which it is contained.

On the Possibility of Poetic Embodiment: Articulatory Gesture in Paul Celan’s “Offene Glottis”

The metaphor of proximity underwriting the notion of ‘close’ reading presumes a sublated distance, as if one were moving ‘up close’ to the text in order to scrutinize optically its every minutiae. Reading aloud, on the other hand, can often seem close reading’s less illustrious sibling, with a reputation for being sound pedagogic practice, a way to make the text one’s ‘own’ by revoicing – and sensually enjoying – it in the body rather than taking it interpretively apart in the mind. As simplistic as these dichotomies are, they have a way of surreptitiously infiltrating hermeneutic practice. In order to think through how close reading and reading aloud productively intertwine, the following argument reconstructs the disciplinary history of the concept of phonic or articulatory gesture (Lautgebärde), tracking its origin in early twentieth-century ‘ethnopsychology’ and its afterlife in linguistics and literary theory. The argument then makes the case that articulatory gestures in poetry pose a significant challenge to literary hermeneutics. This section draws on contemporary work in the phenomenology of embodiment as well as Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic account of poetic language in order to probe novel modes of para-hermeneutic reading. The argument’s third and final step focuses on how articulatory gesture, as a general poetic phenomenon, gains historically specific contour and singular poetic function in the poem “Offene Glottis” by Paul Celan, shedding light on Celan’s pneumatic poetics in the process.

PENCIPTAAN ALAM SEMESTA DALAM AL-QUR’AN DAN TANAKH (YAHUDI) : PENDEKATAN INTERTEKSTUALITAS JULIA KRISTEVA

Abstract
 This article discusses the creation of nature in the Qur'an. As the title of this article suggests, the author is interested in explaining how the comparisons and differences in the creation of nature are found in the Qur'an, the Muslim book and the Tanakh, the Jewish book, because of the similarities between the two in explaining the creation of nature. Therefore, in this paper the author uses the intertextuality approach initiated by Julia Kristeva to compare the Qur'an and the Tanakh. The result of this paper from a structural point of view is the dominant overstatement equation, so that the parallel principle is slightly superior in the three sections, then the exception, haplology, and conversion principles are also found in each section. The fundamental difference lies in how the natural processes were created, in what stages they occurred, and the order in which the universe was created.

Elizabeth Bishop and the Watery Discourse: The Semiotic Chora at play

This paper theorizes the use of water imagery in Elizabeth Bishop’s selected postmodern poetry namely, “The Map”, “The Imaginary Iceberg” and “The Man-Moth”. Speaking in the language of tears, lake, bay, river, strait, sea and ocean, Bishop personifies water for culture and its language. It is on this basis that Bishop comes close to the French psychoanalyst and linguist, Julia Kristeva’s concept of the semiotic chora. Kristeva calls it a space of maternal discourse, where the fluid realm of mother’s body called chora celebrates the fluidity of semiotic desires and expresses them through the symbolic language of the world outside her body. Bishop revisits this bodily space, time and again, to acquire subjectivity through the mother/child bond. Bishop’s poetic language celebrates this relationship between the semiotic (maternal) and symbolic (paternal) realm of language. The symbolic enables the semiotic to express itself, and the semiotic shatters the rigidity of the symbolic meanings through an ongoing process of signification. This reciprocity, through the semiotic chora, makes Bishop’s identity fluid and always in motion towards multiplicity. This plurality brings newness to Bishop’s poetry and engages the researcher with fresh perspectives of outer vision, inner perception, structural patterns and make her poetry eventful.

Julian Barnes’ın Biricik Hikâye’sinde Yeniden Kurulmuş Aşk Angısı

Julian Barnes’s novel The Only Story (2018) can be read as a monograph on the complications of love. By focalising the narrative situations and events through the consistently transforming perspective of a failed lover, Barnes shows how digging into the past events through the awakening lens of memory can lead to previously censored self-realizations. Set in three interconnected parts, The Only Story increasingly changes into a disintegrating process of an unconventional love affair between a late adolescent and a middle-aged married woman. Considering this, the present article has two goals. By relying on Jacques Lacan’s theory of love, the paper shows how in The Only Story Barnes presents an ever-changing, or illusory definition/experience of love. Besides that, and by drawing on Julia Kristeva’s definition of the concept shared singularity, the paper argues how by setting the main part of narrative in the revolutionary decade of 1960s, Barnes presents the difficulty of any cohabitation, combination, dialogue, or sharing between the two opposing egos and discourses. The primary aim of this paper, therefore, is to show how the narrator and his partner fail in maintaining their love affair through building a shared singularity between themselves.

Abjection and Taboo Objects in Edward Bond’s Plays

What is most striking about Edward Bond’s plays is his unconventional representation of visible forms of violence and insanity. His plays deeply probe political, economic, and societal norms and values in provocative and thought-provoking ways for which he has often been compared to such contemporary British playwrights as Pinter, Brenton, Osborne, and Arden who profusely use violence and cruelty in their works. This article draws on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and develops the argument that violence in Edward Bond can be placed within the field of abjection as its diverse manifestations appear as taboo objects, abject emaciated, festering bodies and sites of abjection that populate his dramatic world.

Intertextuality and Tradition

Intertextuality and Tradition

The Critical Outlook to Eleni Sikelianos' Body Clock: Poems with the Theoretical Backgrounds from Theorists Julia Kristeva and Susanna Egan

The Critical Outlook to Eleni Sikelianos' Body Clock: Poems with the Theoretical Backgrounds from Theorists Julia Kristeva and Susanna Egan

IMAGINARIES AND EXPULSION: How 1,000 Temporary Accommodation Units for Refugees in the City of Gothenburg Became 57

AbstractFrom September to November 2015, more than 100,000 people applied for asylum in Sweden. Societal solidarity was unmistakable during this period, but six months later, when the refugees were to be accommodated, the situation had changed. In this analysis of imaginaries of migrants as strangers I scrutinize the city of Gothenburg's plan to build 1,000 temporary housing units to accommodate refugees. The project failed, resulting in only 57 units being built. In this article I analyse the societal imaginations the project revealed, including those embedded in political and public conflicts of opinion. In an attempt to understand why people sometimes refuse to share social space, I draw on a combination of Sara Ahmed's theories on the figure of ‘the stranger’ and Julia Kristeva's theories on how the stranger emanates from an ontological lack. I also outline in the article how different techniques of expulsion can be used to create spatial and temporal estrangement. In the subsequent analysis I demonstrate how practices of exclusion worked to expel migrants from urban development plans in the city of Gothenburg. The conclusion emphasizes the urgent need to scrutinize imaginaries among majority populations, and draws attention to the fact that the ‘foreigner is within us’.

“Brought up to Live Double Lives”: Intelligence and Espionage as Literary and Philosophical Figures in Ciaran Carson’s Exchange Place and For All We Know

The article examines the figure of the spy—alongside themes related to espionage—as employed in two books by the Northern Irish writer Ciaran Carson (1948–2019): the volume of poems For All We Know (2008) and the novel Exchange Place (2012). Carson’s oeuvre is permeated with the Troubles and he has been hailed one of key writers to convey the experience of living in a modern surveillance state. His depiction of Belfast thematizes questions of terrorism, the insecurity and anxiety it causes in everyday life, as well as the unceasing games of appearances and the different ways of verifying or revising identities. In Carson’s later work, however, these aspects acquire greater philosophical depth as the author uses the themes of doubles, spies, and makeshift identities to discuss writing itself, the construction of subjectivity, and the dialogic relationship with the other. Taking a cue from Paul Ricoeur’s and Julia Kristeva’s conceptions of “oneself as another,” the article examines how Carson’s spy-figures can be read as metaphors for processes of self-discovery and identity-formation, tied to the notion of “self-othering.” Carson employs the figure of the spy—who juggles identities by “donning” different clothes or languages—to scrutinize how one ventures into the dangerous territory of writing, translation and love, as well as to reconsider notions of originality and self-mastery. Ultimately, Carson conceptualizes literature as specially marked by deceptions and metamorphoses, defining in these terms the human condition.

'Controlled by' and 'Controlling with' Sex: Comparing Portrayal of 'Nooran' and 'Haseena Begum' - Two Female Characters of Khushwant Singh's Modern Classic: Train to Pakistan

Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), a quintessential post-colonial novel and a lucid modern classic - is based on the societal conditions and upheavals of during and post-liberation Pak - Indo subcontinent in 1947. Having set the plot of his novel in a fictional Punjabi village 'Mano Majra' - located near to the India - Pakistan border, Singh attempted to analyze how human relationships change in a tormented - apocalyptic society. However, this paper aims at studying how in an overtly masculine society as portrayed in the novel, amidst the fright of religious persecution, sexualized violence, the fallaciousness of mob rule, and formation of new identities via displacement - two of the novel's main female characters - Nooran, who is sexually subjugated within the text, and Haseena Begum, who uses her bodily charm to meet her days ends, stand out differently due to the disparity in their social orientations, and life choices. To explore the posed query, this paper will use Virginia Woolf's ideas from -"Professions for Women" (1942) an article apparently archaic today, but the ideas posited in it were very much contemporary to the novel's setting, as well as Julia Kristeva's apparently contemporary ideas in - "Woman Can Never Be Defined" (1974), where these critics talked about women's sexuality, their professions, their privileged relationship with father/paternal figure of their family, and how all these lead them to abidance towards prejudiced masculine norms set by the society.

Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China

Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China

Frankenstein Redux

Frankenstein Redux