g kristeva revolution

7/30/2019 g Kristeva Revolution

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Revolution in Poetic

Languageby Julia Kristeva


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Outline

I. Introduction

II. The Semiotic and the Symbolic

2. The Semiotic Chora Ordering the Drive 5. The Thetic: Rupture and/or Boundary

12. Genotext and Phenotext

III. Examples for Practice


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Introduction

Her focus: the workings ofpoetic language as asignifying practice, that is, as a semiotic systemgenerated by a speaking subject within a socialhistorical field (intro. 1)

the infinite possibilities of language

Revolution: question the traditional epistemologicalsubject and patriarchal language

subject in process-- brings the body back into signifyingpractice

focus on the maternal and pre-Oedipal in the constitution ofsubjectivity


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Questions

How does Kristeva construct subjectivity?

How does she combine psychoanalytic concept

of divided subject with structuralist concept of

language (as signification)?


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Semiotic Process and chora

The operation of semiotic drive -- as signifying process(p.2169-72)

1. The facilitation and the structuring disposition of drives

2. Displacement and condensation of energies and their

inscription (69)

semiotic chora rupture and articulation (rhythm)

a nonexpressive totality formed by the drives and their stases in a

motility( ) that is as full of movement as it is regulated.

From Platos choramobile and uncertain articulation (differentfrom disposition)

Our discourseall discoursemoves with and against the

chora in the sense that it simultaneously depends upon and

refuses it.


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Chora

(2170-71)

Not

A sign, a position, nor

a signfier A model or copy

Is

Generated in order to attain to this signifying

position

Precedes and underlines figuration and thus

specularization

Vocal and kinetic rhythm

A receptacle, nourishing and maternal (2171)

[physical social] Its Vocal and gestural

organization is subject to

an objectiveordering, which is dictated by natural or socio-

historical constraints (2171)


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Semiotic vs. Symbolic

Chora as the pre-symbolic: -- a modality of signifiance inwhich the linguistic sign is not yet articulated as the absence ofthe object and as the distinction between the real and thesymbolic (2171). (p.2172) Pre-Oedipal driveswhich are both destructive and

assimilating, i.e. including displacement and condensation, absorptionand repulsion

(p. 2173) drive attack against stasis, chora a place where the subjectis both generated and negated.

The process of charges and stasis negativity

The symbolic: social language social effects constitutedthrough objective constraints of biological difference andhistorical considerations (p.2171) organize the chorathrough an ordering (mediation) but not according to a law.

The mothers body as mediation between the symbolic order

and the semiotic chora


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Semiotic Drives symbolization

The semiotic rhythm: text is the terrain of operatingsignifying process (p.2172)

Checked by biological and social constraints (or the

symbolic) Semiotic marks: voice, gesture, color; a

psychosomatic modality connecting the physical andthe social (2173)

symbolization through connection and functions(e.g. metonymy and metaphor; condensation anddisplacement; 2174 syntax)


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Summary: Body and the semiotic

Chora -- The space of the drives;

The semiotic -- the bodily drive as it is discharged in

signification (signifiance). The semiotic is associated

with the rhythms, tones, and movement of signifyingpractices. As the discharge of drives, it is also

associated with (and mediated by) the maternal body,

the first source of rhythms, tones, and movements for

every human being since we all have resided in that

body.


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The Symbolic & the Semiotic

element of signification is associated with thegrammar and structure of signification. Thesymbolic element is what makes referencepossible.

Without the symbolic, all signification would bebabble or delirium. But, without the semiotic, allsignification would be empty and have noimportance for our lives. Ultimately, signification

requires both the semiotic and symbolic; there isno signification without some combination of both.

source
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Kristeva.htmlhttp://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Kristeva.html


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The Thetic as Rupture

Signification as proposition or judgment, a realm ofpositions. structured as a break in the signifyingprocess

The break is thetic; it produces the positing ofsignification. (Meaning is produced through ruptureand break.)

Thetic significationthe threshhold of language: a

stage arrived at during the signifying process; itconstitutes the subject, but the subject is not reducedto such stage; nor to the transcendental ego.


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Genotext and Phenotext

genotext: the body of transferring process that is notrestricted to univocal information (includes drives,their disposition, and their division of the body, plusecological and social system surrounding the body)

(p.2176) 2177 a process; forming structure out of ephemeral and

non-signifying structures

a) instinctual dyads, b. corporeal-ecological continuum, c.the social organism and family structure. d. matrices of

signification. phenotext: a structure follows rules of

communications and denotes language forrepresentation (the emergence of object and subject,and the constitution of nuclei of meaning involvingcategories) (p.2177)


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Genotext and Phenotext

Genotext as topography (spaces of connections) vs.

Phenotext as algebra (forms of relations) (2178)

Signification: stopping the signifying process at one

or another theses that it traverses; they knot it andlock it into a given surface or structure.

Phenotext conveys these obliteration of the infiinity

of language.

A new semiotics: the genotext exists within the

phenotext, which is the perceivable signifying system


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The semiotic disposition

Those with the semiotic disposition allow the

emergence of the semiotic in the symbolic, or

the genotext in the phenotext.

E.g. rhythm, ambiguity and over-symbolicity,

the switches and multiplicity of locutionary

positions.


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The Semiotic: Examples

Music -- Mallarme air and song beneath the

text (2174)


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Giotto

The Last Judgment

1306

Figure vs. Color

http://www.wga.hu/frames-

e.html?/html/g/giotto/padova/4lastjud/

Fresco, 1000 x 840 cm

Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/giotto/padova/4lastjud/http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/giotto/padova/4lastjud/http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/giotto/padova/4lastjud/http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/giotto/padova/4lastjud/http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/giotto/padova/4lastjud/


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The Maternal Body

Rejected by and split from the child

motherhood as a luminous

spatialization, the ultimate language ofjouissance at the far limits of repression,

where bodies, identities, and signs are

begotten

(Desire in Language 269)


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Giovanni Bellini

Madonna and Child

http://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Healt

h/Giovanni_Bellini.htm

1460-1464

1487
http://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.htmhttp://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.htmhttp://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.htmhttp://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.htm


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Giovanni Bellini

Madonna and Child http://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.

htm

The final series of motherhoodpaintingscarries on and perfects

Bellinis mastery of the style he

created between 1480 and 1500.The mothers face again falls into

calmness/absence, dreams of an

unsignifiable experience. The

infantappears more easily

separable. The maternal figure

increasing appears as a module, a

process, present only to justify this

cleaved space.. . .(263-64)

1510
http://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.htmhttp://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.htmhttp://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.htmhttp://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Giovanni_Bellini.htm


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Practice

On The Yellow Wallpaper: The official text

needs to be broken down and the writing seen

as both subjectivity and communication--

writing where one reads the other (Desire in

Language). Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a

model of Julia Kristevas theory.(source)
http://www.msu.edu/user/vasicekb/980/GILKRIS.HTMhttp://www.msu.edu/user/vasicekb/980/GILKRIS.HTM


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Georgia O'Keeffe

Black Iris


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Pollock, Jackson Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952


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Pollock, Jackson Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952

Context:

1. existentialism ("existence precedes essence"); alone in thevoid (alienation);

2. the Cold War: post-Hiroshima; the Soviet Union gets the

bomb in 1949;

3. the 50's beat generation (pushing to the edge of one's

consciousness.)

4. Jungian analysis (the collective unconscious; the archetype;

mythic structures embedded in everyone's unconscious).

5. Inspired byjazz improvisation; listened to records by Charlie

Parker while he painted. Also influenced by Native American

sand painting and the idea that painting could be ritualistic, a

rites of passage.

(source: http://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/439mid/ah439mid-Info.00011.html )
http://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/439mid/ah439mid-Info.00011.htmlhttp://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/439mid/ah439mid-Info.00011.htmlhttp://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/439mid/ah439mid-Info.00011.htmlhttp://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/439mid/ah439mid-Info.00011.html


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Conclusion

Retrieve subject from language: thetic

signification

the text, in the concept of intertextuality, explores the internal

conflicts in culture and serves as a new semiotics by ecriturefeminine (p.2175)

related website: The feminist Theory Website:

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminismhttp://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism

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