Julia Kristeva: Major Concepts and Key Terms

Provider: Kate Liu /劉紀雯

1. Her attempt to bring the body back into discourses in the human sciences;
2. Her focus on the significance of the maternal and preoedipal in the constitution of subjectivity;
3. Her revision of contemporary linguistics which focused on the communicative function of language (e.g. generative grammar, speech acts). a genotext
(Her notion of abjection as an explanation for oppression and discrimination. source)

The bodily drive as it is discharged in signification. The semiotic is associated with the rhythms, tones, and movement of signifying practices. As the discharge of drives, it is also associated with the maternal body, the first source of rhythms, tones, and movements for every human being since we all have resided in that body.

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 position.

element of signification is associated with the grammar and structure of signification. The symbolic element is what makes reference possible.

Without the symbolic, all signification would be babble or delirium. But, without the semiotic, all signification would be empty and have no importance for our lives. Ultimately, signification requires both the semiotic and symbolic; there is no signification without some combination of both. (source)