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Discourse on trial: Julia Kristeva and feminist thinking

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2022

Abstract

Julia Kristeva's thinking appears to be very ambivalent in the reflections of feminist theorists. This heterogeneity of interpretations arise specifically within a position that is based on the question of whether Kristeva's theorizing is in any way useful to feminist practice and can provide the basis for action that leads to the emancipation of the subject from oppressive structures.

Our intention is to show that at the heart of this ambivalence is primarily Kristeva's conception of subjectivity, which is not fully transferable to feminist discourse: Kristeva's critics argue that her conception of the subject will always escape the feminist perspective. However, we will try to interpret some points of her thought not in relation to feminist critique, but primarily to the critique of semiology.

Such interpretations will become a starting point for us to present a perspective in which this "escaping" is a certain practice, but one that is irreducible to feminist practice.