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.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Suffering: A Piece of the Reality that has Come to grief
The Tendential Severance of the Semiotic and Symbolic
Part I. From the Revolutionary Standpoint to the Nihilism Problematic
1. The Early View of Psychoanalysis and Art
Introduction
The Lacanian Background
Revolution in Poetic Language
2. Primary Narcissism
The Appearance of the Nihilism Problematic
Primary Idealization
3. Ab-jection
Introduction
The Phobic Object
‘Where Am I?’
4. Primal Loss
Introduction
Intolerance for Loss
The Signifying Failure
Part II. Art and Religion: Kristeva’s Minor Histories of Modernity
5. The Powers and Limitations of Religion
Introduction
Psychoanalysis and the Sacred
Religious Codifications of Abjection
6. The Kristevan Aesthetic
Introduction
Holbein: ‘God is dead’
Duras: A New Suffering World
A New Amatory World
Part III. The Social and Political Implications of Kristeva’s Thought
7. Ethics and Politics
Introduction
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
Nations Without Nationalism
8. Kristeva’s Feminism
Introduction
‘Woman’ and ‘Nature’
Kristeva or Butler?
The Maternal Feminine
Conclusion: Revolt Culture and Exemplary Lives
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Sara Beardsworth is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University.