Julia Kristeva,
(b. Bulgaria, 1941), lives in Paris and writes in French on psychoanalysis,
semiotics, and philosophy. Taking up the question of "Why do we speak?"
in all of its ambiguities, Kristeva addresses the issues of the relationship
of meaning to language, the relationship of meaning to life, and the relationship
of language to life. In fact, Kristeva's most famous contribution
to language theory, the distinction between the symbolic and the semiotic
elements of signification, speaks to these questions in a revolutionary
way, opening pathways rather than resigning us to an impasse.
Kristeva maintains that
all signification is composed of two elements, the symbolic and the semiotic.
The symbolic element is what philosophers might think of as referential
meaning. That is, the symbolic is the element of signification that
sets up the structures by which symbols operate. The symbolic is
the structure or grammar that governs the ways in which symbols can refer.
The semiotic element, on the other hand, is the organization of drives
in language. It is associated with rhythms and tones that are meaningful
parts of language and yet do not represent or signify something.
In Revolution in Poetic Language (1974), Kristeva maintains that
rhythms and tones do not represent bodily drives; rather bodily drives
are discharged through rhythms and tones. In New Maladies of the
Soul (1993), she discusses different ways of representing that are
not linguistic in a traditional sense. There, Kristeva says that
the meaning of the semiotic element of language is "translinguistic" or
"nonlinguistic"; she explains this by describing these semiotic elements
as irreducible to language because they "turn toward language even though
they are irreducible to its grammatical and logical structures".
This is to say that they are irreducible to the symbolic element of language.
The symbolic element of language is the domain of position and judgment.
It is associated with the grammar or structure of language that enables
it to signify something.
The dialectical oscillation
between the semiotic and the symbolic is what makes signification possible.
Without the symbolic element of signification, we have only sounds or delirious
babble. But without the semiotic element of signification, signification
would be empty and we would not speak; for the semiotic provides the motivation
for engaging in signifying processes. We have a bodily need to communicate.
The symbolic provides the structure necessary to communicate. Both
elements are essential to signification. And it is the tension between
them that makes signification dynamic. The semiotic both motivates
signification and threatens the symbolic element. The semiotic provides
the movement or negativity and the symbolic provides the stasis or stability
that keeps signification both dynamic and structured.
While the symbolic element
gives signification its meaning in the strict sense of reference, the semiotic
element gives signification meaning in a broader sense. That is,
the semiotic element makes symbols matter; by discharging drive force in
symbols, it makes them significant. Even though the semiotic challenges
meaning in the strict sense, meaning in the terms of the symbolic, it gives
symbols their meaning for our lives. Signification makes our lives
meaningful, in both senses of meaning--signifying something and having
significance--through its symbolic and semiotic elements. The interdependence
of the symbolic and semiotic elements of signification guarantees a relationship
between language and life, signification and experience; the interdependence
between the symbolic and semiotic guarantees a relationship between body
(soma) and soul (psyche).
By insisting the language expresses bodily drives through its semiotic
element, Kristeva's articulation of the relationship between language and
the body circumvents the traditional problems of representation.
The tones and rhythms of language, the materiality of language, is bodily.
Kristeva's theory addresses the problem of the relationship between language
and bodily experience by postulating that, through the semiotic element,
bodily drives manifest themselves in language. In stead of lamenting
what is lost, absent, or impossible in language, Kristeva marvels at this
other realm that makes its way into language. The force of language
is living drive force transferred into language. Signification is
like a transfusion of the living body into language. This is why
psychoanalysis can be effective; the analyst can diagnose the active drive
force as it is manifest in the analysand's language. Language is
not cut off from the body. And, while, for Kristeva, bodily drives
involve a type of violence, negation, or force, this process does not merely
necessitate sacrifice and loss. The drives are not sacrificed to
signification; rather bodily drives are an essential semiotic element of
signification.
In Tales of Love
(1983), Kristeva identifies meaning—both the meaning of language and of
life--with love. She describes the contemporary melancholic or borderline
personality as a child with no adequate images of a loving mother or a
loving father. Kristeva suggests that (in the West) traditionally
Christianity has provided images of a loving mother and a loving father,
as problematic as those images might be. But, with contemporary suspicions
of religion, she seems to ask, where can we find images of loving mothers
and fathers? And, without images of loving mothers and fathers, how
can we love ourselves?
For Kristeva, love provides
the support for fragmented meanings and fragmented subjectivities.
Love provides the support to reconnect words and affects. She says
that "love is something spoken, and it is only that". Our lives have
meaning for us, we have a sense of ourselves, through the narratives which
we prepare to tell others about our experience. Even if we
do not tell our stories, we live our experience through the stories that
we construct in order to "tell ourselves" to another, a loved one.
As we wander through our days, an event takes on its significance in the
narrative that we construct for an imaginary conversation with a loved
one as we are living it. The living body is a loving body, and the
loving body is a speaking body. Without love we are nothing but walking
corpses. Love is essential to the living body and it is essential
in bringing the living body to life in language.
Kelly Oliver
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