Abstract
The aim of this paper is to discuss the concept of ethics, which can be read in Julia Kristeva's work on poetic language. I will point out that such a conception has its basis in Kristeva's reconsideration of the use of linguistic methods for the study of language (in favour of a "Marxist-Freudian" conception).
In this context, not only the object of investigation is changed, but also the ethical foundation. This reconsideration results in Kristeva's attempt to examine the elements that are not theorizable within linguistics.
A specific conception of semiotics based on poetic language is thus established. I understand this turn not primarily as a gesture aimed at extending scientific knowledge, but as a gesture moving the theory towards ethics as a specific kind of relation to the other.
This ethics is given a space framed by "delirium" on the one hand and "submission to the law" on the other. It thus allows us to understand ethics as a practice of the subject that must necessarily take place at the crossroads of these two spheres and is a permanent "negotiation" between violence and order.