Desire In Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art - Softcover

KRISTEVA

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0631130454 ISBN 13: 9780631130451

Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell, 1982

Synopsis

This study proposes and tests theories involving first the origin and development of the novel, and second what the author has defined as a signifying practice in "poetic language" and pictorial works. She rejects the postulates of Freudian ego psychology, and argues the existence in language of a split subject divided between unconscious and conscious motivations; that is, between physiological processes and social constraints.

About this title

Review

"Kristeva's depiction of contrariety and anomaly at the heart of postmodernist theory is ingenious, provocative, and challenging." -- "Contemporary Literature"

"Kristeva changes the place of things: she always destroys the "latest preconception," the one we thought we could be comforted by, the one of which we could be proud; what she displaces is the illusion that it has all been said already, that is, she removes the pressure of the signified----in a word, stupidity; what she subverts is authority----that of monological science, of filiation." -- Roland Barthes

About the Author

Julia Kristeva, internationally known psychoanalyst and critic, is Professor of Linguistics at the University de Paris VII. She has hosted a French television series and is the author of many critically acclaimed books published by Columbia University Press in translation, including Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature and the novel, Possessions.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell
• Publication date: 1982
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0631130454
• ISBN 13: 9780631130451
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320