Since Dr Sandra Lee (a.k.a., Dr Pimple Popper) joined YouTube in 2010, she has racked up over two billion views. While some viewers may just be genuinely interested in dermatology, many others watch her work for the thrill of a gross but satisfying 'pop'. But why are some things, like pimples, considered so disgusting and fascinating at the same time? Julia Kristeva (1941–present) created an entire theory dedicated to answering this question. Let's take a closer look at Kristeva's theories of abjection and the semiotic, two of her pivotal contributions to feminist and literary theory.
Julia Kristeva: contribution to literary theory
Julia Kristeva (also known as Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva) is a French-Bulgarian writer, psychoanalyst, and prominent figure in the development of post-structuralist literary theory. After completing her linguistics degree at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria, Kristeva moved to Paris in 1966, where post-structuralism was in full swing.
Post-structuralism: an intellectual movement originating in France during the 1960s and 70s.
Post-structuralists built on structuralist ideas in the fields of semiotics and anthropology. Structuralists believed that human culture and language were made up of universal structures. As a result, structuralists argued that culture and language, despite their vast complexity, could be broken down into their smallest units of meaning and analysed at the most basic level.
Semiotics: the study of the signs and symbols used in human communication.
Post-structuralists, such as Julia Kristeva, took this argument further by saying that these smallest units of meaning could change. This had huge implications – if culture and language were built on unstable foundations, there could be no absolute truths. The post-structuralists encouraged people to question everything, and this has had a huge influence on literary theory.
The main tenets of post-structuralist literary criticism include:
- Meaning is unstable and always subject to change.
- A text's author doesn't have authority over its meaning.
- Texts should be analysed as products of the structures of knowledge that produced them.
Did you know? Other post-structuralist thinkers include Jaques Lacan (1901–81), Roland Barthes (1915–80), and Michel Foucault (1926–84).
Fig. 1 - For post-structuralists, the structures that make up culture and language are fluid and unstable.
In 2004, Kristeva's contributions to the humanities and social sciences were honoured by the Holberg International Memorial Prize. She was praised for her 'innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture and literature', including her theories of the semiotic and objection, which will be explored in more detail later.1
Julia Kristeva: books
Over the course of her career, Julia Kristeva has published more than 30 books so far, including:
- Revolution in Poetic Language (1974)
- Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980)
- Tales of Love (1984)
- Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1987)
- Strangers to Ourselves (1988)
Revolution in Poetic Language and Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection contain Kristeva's most influential theories of the semiotic and abjection.
Julia Kristeva: feminist theory
Julia Kristeva has a complicated relationship with feminism. Some hail Kristeva's works as influential within feminist scholarship, while others argue that Kristeva's views don't fit with feminist ideals. Kristeva herself has even been known not to identify with feminism.2
Feminism: a movement advocating women's rights and the equality of the sexes by challenging patriarchal structures in society (structures that favour men as the key holders of power)
In pure post-structuralist fashion, it's best not to focus too much on Kristeva's personal opinions about feminism. Instead, look at her theory and how it has contributed to feminist thought to better use it in literary analysis.
Revolution in Poetic Language and 'the semiotic'
Julia Kristeva's dissertation, Revolution in Poetic Language, has often been cited in feminist scholarship. In the text, Kristeva expands on the field of semiotics previously developed by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), who famously proposed that language is structured from linguistic signs.
Linguistic signs: a combination of the signifier (something that communicates meaning, like a word or sound pattern) and the signified (a meaning or concept).
The word 'tree' is a sign. Whatever image pops into your or your communication partner's head when the word 'tree' is read or spoken is the signified. This image becomes connected to the word 'tree' through the signification process.
Kristeva looks at semiotics through the lens of psychoanalysis. Kristeva uses the theories of the famous psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and especially Jaques Lacan to explore how the psychosexual development of femininity and masculinity influences language and meaning.
Psychoanalysis: a branch of psychology that looks at the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind and the effects this has on human development and behaviour.
For Kristeva, signification in a language isn't just a matter of peacefully and logically organising human thought into the sign and the signified. No, no! The process of signification is a constant battle between the symbolic (ordered, logical thinking) and the semiotic (instinctive, emotional feeling).
This is a battle that can never be won by either side because language needs both the symbolic and the semiotic to exist. As this push and pull is a constant process, nothing can have a single, fixed meaning.
Remember: what Julia Kristeva terms 'the semiotic' isn't the same as Saussure's 'semiotics'. When Kristeva talks about 'the semiotic', she is talking about the instincts and emotions through which an infant experiences the world before they develop a sense of self and the ability to use and understand language.
Fig. 2 - For Julia Kristeva, language is the product of interactions between the symbolic (ordered, logical thinking) and the semiotic (instinctive, emotional feeling).
So, how does this come into feminist theory?
To begin with, Kristeva associates the symbolic with masculinity and the semiotic with femininity because of the close relationship between mother and child before language development. In Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva highlights the vital and revolutionary role of the feminine and femininity in the development of language and culture.
Although it could seem like Kristeva emphasises stereotypes of sexual difference in her semiotic theory, this is not strictly the case. For Kristeva, femininity and masculinity are not necessarily tied to biological sex.2 Kristeva rejects the idea that men and women are intrinsically different. Instead, she sees identity as something fluid and ever-changing.
Food for thought: Some feminist theorists see these ideas as liberating. Others see Kristeva's arguments as too contradictory due to the stereotypical connections she draws between femininity/maternity and masculinity/patriarchy. What do you think?
Julia Kristeva: abjection theory
Developed from her theory of the semiotic, Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection is fascinated with everything disgustingly horrifying, why it grosses us out, and why we are sometimes still drawn to it.
The theory is often included in literary analysis of the horror genre.
Horror genre: a genre of literature that seeks to entertain its audience by disgusting, shocking, or scaring them.
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection
In Powers of Horror, Kristeva explores the abject and abjection.
The abject: things that make humans feel horror and disgust because they blur the delicate boundary between the subject ('the self') and the object ('the other').
Abjection: the act of separating the subject from the object.
So what causes certain things to be abject, and why do we abject them?
According to psychoanalytic theory, six to 18-month-old babies go through 'the mirror stage' during psychosexual development. Before this period, they see themselves as part of their mother. This changes during the mirror stage as babies begin to recognise their reflections and see themselves as individuals. They become 'the self', and their mother becomes 'the other'.
The psychoanalytic theory of the mirror stage (in which 'the self' and 'the other' become separated) has been influential in discussions about why humans tend to structure themselves into groups of 'us' vs 'them'.
The postcolonial scholar Gayatri Spivak, for example, coined the term 'othering' to describe how colonisers constructed and maintained images of colonised natives as different and inferior to them.
The rejection of the mother during the mirror stage is the first act of abjection. Over the course of our lives, we continue to abject anything that threatens a stable sense of self-identity and meaning. When we encounter things that are abject, we tend to feel horror and disgust.
Think of the skin on a warm glass of milk. It's just milk, but there's something icky about it. According to Kristeva, this is because milk skin is 'abject'.
The layer of skin creates a split in a person's mind. The milk skin is both part of and separate from the milk at the same time. It also blurs the boundary between self and other by resembling our own skin, which should protect us from the outside world instead of being ingested.
Other things that could be described as abject include wounds, blood, pus, and decay because they tap into our deepest fears of cleanliness, order, and the self. Yet, while these things can horrify or disgust us, we may also be drawn to them because they represent deep desires towards the parts of ourselves we repress to maintain order in our lives.
Julia Kristeva: quotes
How did Julia Kristeva think her theories were connected to the study of literature? Here are some quotes where she joins the dots.
Since the end of the nineteenth century, 'poetry' has deliberately maintained the balance between sociality and madness. (Chapter 5, Revolution in Poetic Language).
Kristeva sees poetry and poetic language as revolutionary because of their close connections to the emotional, instinctive realm of language and meaning-making: the semiotic.
Because it occupies its place, because it hence decks itself out in the sacred power of horror, literature may also involve not an ultimate resistance to but an unveiling of the abject. (Chapter 11, Powers of Horror).
In this quote, Kristeva explores how literature is a productive space in which we can experience the abject from a safe distance. Rather than confront the abject directly, we can read about it.
Julia Kristeva - Key takeaways
- Julia Kristeva is a French-Bulgarian writer, psychoanalyst, and prominent figure in the development of post-structuralist literary theory.
- Julia Kristeva's theories of the semiotic and abjection have been highly influential within feminist and literary scholarship.
- Over the course of her career, Julia Kristeva has published more than 30 books so far, including Revolution in Poetic Language (1974) and Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980).
- Julia Kristeva's theory of the semiotic argued that nothing can have a fixed, stable meaning.
- Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection explores how and why humans tend to feel horror or disgust towards certain things and why we are often still drawn to them.
1 The Holberg Committee. 'The Holberg Prize 2004 was awarded to the Bulgarian-French psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva.' Holberg Prize. 2004.
2 Toril Moi. 'Introduction'. The Kristeva Reader. Columbia University Press. 1986.
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