Kelly Oliver

S. K. Keltner

Considers the social and political significance of Kristeva’s oeuvre.

Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Work of Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva is one of the most creative and prolific writers to address the personal, social, and political trials of our times. Linguist, psychoanalyst, social and cultural theorist, and novelist, Kristeva′s broad interdisciplinary appeal has impacted areas across the humanities and social sciences. S. K. Keltner′s book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the breadth of Kristeva′s work. In an original and insightful analysis, Keltner presents Kristeva′s thought as the coherent development and elaboration of a complex, multidimensional threshold constitutive of meaning and subjectivity. The threshold′ indicates Kristeva′s primary sphere of concern, the relationship between the speaking being and its particular social and historical conditions; and Kristeva′s interdisciplinary approach. Kristeva′s vision, Keltner argues, opens a unique perspective within contemporary discourses attentive to issues of meaning, subjectivity, and social and political life. By emphasizing Kristeva′s attention to the permeable borders of psychic and social life, Keltner offers innovative readings of the concepts most widely discussed in Kristeva scholarship: the semiotic and symbolic, abjection, love, and loss. She also provides new interpretations of some of the most controversial issues surrounding Kristeva′s work, including Kristeva′s conceptions of intimacy, social and cultural difference, and Oedipal subjectivity, by contextualizing them within her methodological approach and oeuvre as a whole. Julia Kristeva: Thresholds is an engaging and accessible introduction to Kristeva′s theoretical and fictional works that will be of interest to both students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.

S. K. Keltner

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