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Explores the political implications of Kristeva's theoretical and fictional writings.
In Language and Politics in Julia Kristeva, Carol Mastrangelo Bové explores how Kristeva's theoretical and fictional writings contribute to an understanding of contemporary personal and international conflicts. In addition to examining Kristeva's turn to Eastern models-both Russian and Chinese-in thinking through a critique of symbolic language in Western patriarchal psychic formations, Bové also contributes to the debate over essentialism through innovative interpretations of such major works of twentieth-century French culture as Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, Simone de Beauvoir's She Came to Stay, François Truffaut's Jules and Jim, and Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game. Bové argues that the links between the body and the female, on the one hand, and authority and the male, on the other, are psychologically constructed, and are not necessarily or exclusively biological. The book concludes with an examination of Kristeva's Colette.
"…Bové is an adept guide to Kristeva's revisionist engagements with psychoanalysis and feminism, explaining to new readers why the theorist’s work continues to matter." — CHOICE
"Bové knows in intimate detail the large, difficult body of Kristeva's work and its sources, effectively engages with others who have written on Kristeva, and ranges across the intellectual and cultural spectrum to make illuminating connections. This valuable book will help make Kristeva available to readers who might otherwise not have known why they should be interested." — Jonathan Arac, Columbia University
"Bové deals with a topic that is central in a variety of fields: the complex inter-relationship of language, subjectivity, and politics. This book will be of interest not only to those in literary and cultural studies, but also to those in women's studies, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology. Clear and accessible, it makes a significant contribution to the broader debates about critical agency." — Daniel T. O’Hara, Temple University
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Eruption of Conflict: Revolution in Poetic Language
2. A Politics of Desire: Reading Proust with Kristeva
3. Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Remembrance
4. Revisiting Modernism: DeBeauvoir, Truffaut, and Renoir
5. The Two Faces of the Mother’s Mask: Céline and China
6. Kristeva’s Work in the Eighties: A New Space for Woman and Love
7. Fiction, Fact, and Theory: The World as Flesh and Blood
Conclusion
Notes
Index