Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism) - Hardcover

Kristeva, Julia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231114141 ISBN 13: 9780231114141

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2002

Synopsis

A thorough examination of the manner in which three of the most unsettling modern writers -- Aragon, Sartre, and Barthes -- affirm their personal rebellion followed by Kristeva's own ideas on the future of rebellion.

About this title

Review

Kristeva's work is an intricate mix of cultural criticism and psychoanalysis.... Kristeva's call to return to the intimate is salutory in a world given over to the dictates of production and consumption alone. The comments on patriotism, nationalism, hospitality and cosmopolitanism are politically astute and ethically humanist.--Pramod K. Nayar "Philosophy in Review "

The reader will encounter in these pages the literary music of allusive, profound passages that uniquely characterize the expression of Kristeva's thoughts.--Choice

Kristeva... follows up The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt with this important, interdisciplinary tour de force.--Library Journal

Synopsis

Julia Kristeva, herself a product of the famous May '68 Paris student uprising, has long been fascinated by the concept of rebellion and revolution. Psychoanalysts believe that rebellion guarantees our independence and creative capacities, but is revolution still possible? Confronted with the culture of entertainment, can we build and nurture a culture of revolt, in the etymological and Proustian sense of the word: an unveiling, a return, a displacement, a reconstruction of the past, of memory, of meaning? In the first part of the book, Kristeva examines the manner in which three of the most unsettling modern writers -- Aragon, Sartre, and Barthes -- affirm their personal rebellion.In the second part of the book, Kristeva ponders the future of rebellion. She maintains that the "new world order" is not favorable to revolt. "What can we revolt against if power is vacant and values corrupt?" she asks. Not only is political revolt mired in compromise among parties whose differences are less and less obvious, but an essential component of European culture -- a culture of doubt and criticism -- is losing its moral and aesthetic impact.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0231114141
• ISBN 13: 9780231114141
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 392