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SUNY Series in Gender Theory
Julia Kristeva: Psychoanalysis and Modernity
Honorable Mention, 2006 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship presented by the Section on Psychoanalysis of the Canadian Psychological Association
This is the first systematic overview of Julia Kristeva's vision and work in relation to philosophical modernity. It provides a clear, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary analysis of her thought on psychoanalysis, art, ethics, politics, and feminism in the secular aftermath of religion. Sara Beardsworth shows that Kristeva's multiple perspectives explore the powers and limits of different discourses as responses to the historical failures of Western cultures, failures that are undergone and disclosed in psychoanalysis.
This is the first systematic overview of Julia Kristeva's vision and work in relation to philosophical modernity. It provides a clear, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary analysis of her thought on psychoanalysis, art, ethics, politics, and feminism in the secular aftermath of religion. Sara Beardsworth shows that Kristeva's multiple perspectives explore the powers and limits of different discourses as responses to the historical failures of Western cultures, failures that are undergone and disclosed in psychoanalysis.
- GenresPsychoanalysis
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 19, 2022
Review 2025:
I again find this book very interesting. I'm sort of coming to a new understanding of the unconscious. I am really intrigued by the idea of the semiotic, as a pre-symbolic mode of expression. I, like most people, find Kristeva's work to be very challenging, and sometimes to be not quite enough... or a bit of a "tenuous connection" between materials. However, this piece by Beardsworth makes a worldview of her theories as a way of understanding the modern problem of nihilism. I'm very convinced, that this is the basis of psychoanalysis. Nihilism, despair, guilt. Kristeva certainly doesn't use these words (I am using more existential symbols), but Kristeva reaches into something beyond the rational, beyond what can be known, a Heidegerrian kind of working around the Thing. So, it's in the nature (may be a nice word for her work) of her work to be a bit abstract, because the very things she's talking about are not things we can know. And because we can't know it, it makes it very challenging to symbolize it, so this is where we are, trying to symbolize whats unsymbolizable. If you find that idea compelling then keep pursuing her work...
2022 Review:
My gosh... this is an astonishing piece of academic work. This is the most lucid, and clear, outline of Kristeva's thinking that I have yet come across. It traverses her entire oeuvre, with chapter on her distinction in thinking from Lacan's, which to my understanding is a difference between the S/s - to the semiotic & symbolic, to then how psychoanalysis is foundational piece of understanding the subject's crisis of modernity particularly in the trilogy: Powers of Horror, Tales of Love and Black Sun. Then Beardsworth uses this template that she has established in order to explain how Kristeva explains art and religion, in the works of Duras and Holbein, to explain how the tension of subjectivity can be seen through her lens. Finally, we get a chapter on Kristeva's feminism, which at this point is very clear that, and particularly the debate between Kristeva and Butler over the concept of the abject.
I have yet to find such a comprehensive work on Kristeva's thinking... this is my reference point as I will continue to read (particularly her trilogy on psychoanalysis) and probably the more diagnostic books (Strangers to Ourselves, the one on nationalism which names eludes me right now, and Maladies of the Soul).
Interesting conclusion as well, where she refers to the genius of the feminine series, the intellectual (Arendt), the healing (Klein), and the artistic (Colette). This is, according to Beardsworth, the way in which how the feminine is not strictly linked to the maternal (from what I know at least Arendt never had children, I am unsure about Klein or Colette, and particularly for Kristeva how the feminine is in the best place to challenge the illusions of Lacan's story (which Kristeva accepts) of language and lack. I am leaning to say, that although there are some good differences between Kristeva and Lacan, they have more in common in their thinking than what separates them. Unmentioned in this book, is that Lacan mentions the word abjection in Television before Kristeva made it central to her thinking. Also (la femme ce n'est pas ça) is eerily similar to (la femme n'ex-siste pas).
I still have a lot of reading to do with regards to Kristeva, however, Beardsworth has done all the heavy lifting in this book. In comparison to Jardine's biography, which is superficial and not geared for an academic audience... but probably in the spirit of Kristeva in the sense that she tries to paint a picture of how Kristeva's life was lived as mother, healer, intellectual and artist (these are all central to Krsiteva's biographies), this book is not a biography but acts as a good balance to that narrative emphasizing strictly the intellectual insights of Kristeva's oeuvre. I think both books serve different purposes, and both are useful in illuminating different aspects of Kristeva.
A must read if you are interested in Kristeva, psychoanalysis or feminism.
I again find this book very interesting. I'm sort of coming to a new understanding of the unconscious. I am really intrigued by the idea of the semiotic, as a pre-symbolic mode of expression. I, like most people, find Kristeva's work to be very challenging, and sometimes to be not quite enough... or a bit of a "tenuous connection" between materials. However, this piece by Beardsworth makes a worldview of her theories as a way of understanding the modern problem of nihilism. I'm very convinced, that this is the basis of psychoanalysis. Nihilism, despair, guilt. Kristeva certainly doesn't use these words (I am using more existential symbols), but Kristeva reaches into something beyond the rational, beyond what can be known, a Heidegerrian kind of working around the Thing. So, it's in the nature (may be a nice word for her work) of her work to be a bit abstract, because the very things she's talking about are not things we can know. And because we can't know it, it makes it very challenging to symbolize it, so this is where we are, trying to symbolize whats unsymbolizable. If you find that idea compelling then keep pursuing her work...
2022 Review:
My gosh... this is an astonishing piece of academic work. This is the most lucid, and clear, outline of Kristeva's thinking that I have yet come across. It traverses her entire oeuvre, with chapter on her distinction in thinking from Lacan's, which to my understanding is a difference between the S/s - to the semiotic & symbolic, to then how psychoanalysis is foundational piece of understanding the subject's crisis of modernity particularly in the trilogy: Powers of Horror, Tales of Love and Black Sun. Then Beardsworth uses this template that she has established in order to explain how Kristeva explains art and religion, in the works of Duras and Holbein, to explain how the tension of subjectivity can be seen through her lens. Finally, we get a chapter on Kristeva's feminism, which at this point is very clear that, and particularly the debate between Kristeva and Butler over the concept of the abject.
I have yet to find such a comprehensive work on Kristeva's thinking... this is my reference point as I will continue to read (particularly her trilogy on psychoanalysis) and probably the more diagnostic books (Strangers to Ourselves, the one on nationalism which names eludes me right now, and Maladies of the Soul).
Interesting conclusion as well, where she refers to the genius of the feminine series, the intellectual (Arendt), the healing (Klein), and the artistic (Colette). This is, according to Beardsworth, the way in which how the feminine is not strictly linked to the maternal (from what I know at least Arendt never had children, I am unsure about Klein or Colette, and particularly for Kristeva how the feminine is in the best place to challenge the illusions of Lacan's story (which Kristeva accepts) of language and lack. I am leaning to say, that although there are some good differences between Kristeva and Lacan, they have more in common in their thinking than what separates them. Unmentioned in this book, is that Lacan mentions the word abjection in Television before Kristeva made it central to her thinking. Also (la femme ce n'est pas ça) is eerily similar to (la femme n'ex-siste pas).
I still have a lot of reading to do with regards to Kristeva, however, Beardsworth has done all the heavy lifting in this book. In comparison to Jardine's biography, which is superficial and not geared for an academic audience... but probably in the spirit of Kristeva in the sense that she tries to paint a picture of how Kristeva's life was lived as mother, healer, intellectual and artist (these are all central to Krsiteva's biographies), this book is not a biography but acts as a good balance to that narrative emphasizing strictly the intellectual insights of Kristeva's oeuvre. I think both books serve different purposes, and both are useful in illuminating different aspects of Kristeva.
A must read if you are interested in Kristeva, psychoanalysis or feminism.
July 28, 2022
Fantastic analysis of an extremely important and relevant thinker for our times on issues of feminism the abject nihilism among other key issues. Tough to find anything on Kristeva in any language but this is a great study and in English to boot. Must read and very stimulating on so many different themes.
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June 20, 2023If they don't want me then taking care of me
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2007
the comparison between Kristeva and Butler is brilliant
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews