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A collection of 22 interviews and one personal essay,Julia Kristeva Interviews presents an intimate and accessible portrait of one of France's most important critical thinkers and intellectual personalities.

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Customer Reviews (4)

Theory as a unleashed adventure
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 toa 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!!!
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
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, achallenging and complicated work that presumes a good dealof exposure tocontinental philosophy (especially the phenomonologies of Hegel, Husserl,and Heidegger) and Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis. Kristeva does animpresive and convincing - as well as constructive - job of tying togetherthese overlapping philosophical/ideolgical traditions and ties them intonotions of how a subject comes to exist as such in and through a world oflanguage... Going behind the mis-en-abime of Lacan and beyond thelinguistic monism of postsrtucturalism, Kristeva gives a living, breathingaccount of these different themes (of which the previous reviewer seemutterly unaware - but then again, philosophy can be hard)....more later...

Empty waffle
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 regardedclever. ... Read more

Amazon.com
All similarities between Possessions and your average hard-boileddetective novel end with the headless corpse that shows up at the beginning of JuliaKristeva's novel. Kristeva, you see, is not your average writer of detective fiction. She isa psychoanalyst and linguistic theorist, the author of books on both language anddepression--two themes she weaves through this intellectual mystery. The tale beginswith Gloria Harrison, a translator who is murdered and decapitated after a dinner party.Enter Stephanie Delacour, an old friend of the victim and a journalist with a nose formurder. Though Kristeva has provided all the necessary components for a standardmystery--a victim, several suspects, and a detective--she seems far more interested inexploring the psychological issues surrounding her characters than the crime itself. Thepages of Possessions are filled with reflections on motherhood, depression,semiotics, and more. So if you're looking for a mystery novel that will stimulate yourbrain rather than your adrenaline production, Possessions is a good place to start.Book Description

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--Publishers Weekly

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Anna Smith argues that it is the disturbing effect that literature can have on its readers, which attracts critic and psychoanalyst, Julia Kristeva. Smith reviews Kristeva's work, and shows how she is drawn to states of extremity where language and the psyche are under duress. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

julia kristeva review
Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement Anna Smith MacMillan Press. 1996. I picked up this book with some interest as I had had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Smith lecture on Kristeva whilst I was at Canterbury. This review is going to be fairly general given thatthe books editor has warned me not to be too 'technical.' When I was reading the book I felt that it was important for two main reasons. It seems to me that one of the things one's time at university should do (and this seems to happen rarely) is to open the minds of its students, to make them ask questions, both about themselves and their relationship with society. Questioning the system is something which I fear does not happen enough in the post-rogernomic age of blah. This book (through the writings of Kristeva) questions the relationship of the individual to the language(s) that they use. For Kristeva, Smith, and many other writers this is an important beginning when analysing scoiety; especially when one is looking at those not as priviliged as the majority of us here at Victoria. For it is through language that we gain the framework that we use to build up our perception of the world. Smith's reading of Kristeva is aimed at giving us a new way of seeing our relationship to language; specifically the ways in which women are constructed within our (primarily) male language. Secondly I find it heartening that a New Zealander is interacting at an intellectual level with one of the major philosophers of the late twentieth century. But then what is there to stop us? We, as a nation have a great many problems and it is only by dealing with the essentials, by engaging people, that we are going to make this country a better place. That is why I think that YOU should read this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Orientalism
Kristeva's early masterpiece that helped to solidify her reputation in the early 70s as a masterly leftist feminist can now be reread as indicative of the Orientalism of the Paris of the 1970s in which Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Philippe Sollers, and many others championed Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.This revolution of the Parisian letters of the 1970s has now become a powerful wing of what is euphemistically called Cultural Studies, but which is actually a branch of Mao's Cultural Revolution, being played out today in almost every institution of higher education in America.

This book is the purest Orientalism of the kind that Edward Said complains about.She actually argues that because the future is so bright after the Cultural Revolution that the possibilities are unlimited.

It shows the left's prophetic powers in retrospect. ... Read more

Book Description

Noted literary critic, psychoanalyst, and theorist Julia Kristeva presents a thoroughly original and compelling reading of Proust'sRemembrance of Things Past, just delivered at the 1992 T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures at Canterbury. Kristeva's first essay, "Proust and Time Embodied," takes a broadly psychoanalytical, linguistically sensitive approach to Proust's exploration of time and the operation of memory. Next in "In Search of Madeline," she delves into Proust's concept of the little cake that flooded him with the taste of childhood regained, providing an explanation for Proust's search for the deeper levels of childhood grounded in her psychoanalytic experience. ThroughoutProust and the Sense of Time, Kristeva draws on Proust's notebooks and manuscripts, pointing out significant variations in the different versions of his work. She examines his early philosophical training and the philosophical trends in Paris at the turn of the century, seeking to explain how he his concept of the primacy of memory and sensation.

Book Description
A valuable intervention in Kristevan scholarship and a significant and exciting contribution in its own right to post-structuralist discussions of ethical and political agency and practice. Contributors: Judith Butler, Tina Chanter, Marilyn Edelstein, Jean Graybeal, Suzanne Guerlac, Alice Jardine, Lisa Lowe, Noelle McAfee, Norma Claire Moruzzi, Kelly Oliver, Tilottma Rajan, Jacqueline Rose, Allison Weir, Mary Bittner Wiseman, Ewa Ziarek ... Read more

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'Deconstruction', 'psychoanalysis', and 'semiotics' have become part of the vocabulary of contempoorary culture. Reading Theory introduces the principal texts by Derrida, Lacan and Kristeva that are behind these terms and that provide their contexts. This book concentrates its attention on making accessible what these three theorists have written, rather than offering a synthetic obstruction of the fashionable terminology of theory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A brilliant "translation" of some heavy theoretical texts.
Mike Payne's book is a godsend to literary theory students.It distills the heavily theoretical works of Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva, and makes them more easily understandable (if it is possible to truly understand these texts).I had the pleasure of being one of Prof. Payne's students at Bucknell, and I must say that he is as brilliant in class as he is on paper. ... Read more

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-- Paul Wessels,The Cape Times

Book Description
This bibliography surveys the entirety of Kristeva's work published in French and English through 1996. It lists her books, edited collections, contributions to anthologies, articles in journals and newspapers, interviews in French and English, as well as her Curriculum Vitae. It also provides an extensive chronological listing of secondary sources in both French and English, a subject index organized by English subject headings, and a complete name index. ... Read more

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May '68 in France expressed a fundamental version of freedom: not freedom to succeed, but freedom to revolt. Political revolutions ultimately betray revolt because they cease to question themselves. Revolt, as I understand it -- psychic revolt, analytic revolt, artistic revolt -- refers to a permanent state of questioning, of transformations, an endless probing of appearances.

In this book, Julia Kristeva extends the definition of revolt beyond politics per se. Kristeva sees revolt as a state of permanent questioning and transformation, of change that characterizes psychic life and, in the best cases, art. For her, revolt is not simply about rejection and destruction -- it is a necessary process of renewal and regeneration. ... Read more

Book Description
Highly original and theoretically wide-ranging, this book offers new insights into the origins of poetry. Working with much of the significant primary and secondary literature in psychoanalysis, particularly the theories of Julia Kristeva, the book skillfully sketches out a psychoanalytically enhanced theory of poetics through close readings of the works of Dylan Thomas. Through an intense dialogue with pivotal poems, it offers a "subjectivist" theory of poetic language, one that focuses on the interrelation between meaning and subjectivity in the dynamics of the poetic text. In this scheme, the "genesis of the speaking subject" is held to be a reenactment of old and new fantasies of origins, the reality of which is inaccessible to us--buried, as it were, "below time." Among these fantasies, the author also recognizes the psychoanalytic fantasy of origins that guides her own project. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Cross Currents, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2005. The length of the article is 4257 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Healing religion: aesthetics and analysis in the work of Kristeva and Clement.( Julia Kristeva and Catherine Clement)
Author: William W., III Young
Publication: Cross Currents (Newsletter)
Date: June 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 55Issue: 2Page: 152(10)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more