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On negativity in Revolution in Poetic Language

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Abstract

Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language offers a challenge to theories of the subject in psychoanalysis, linguistic theory, and in philosophy. Central to that challenge is Kristeva’s conception of negativity. In this article, I trace the development of the concept of negativity in Revolution in Poetic Language from its root in Hegel, to rejection, which Kristeva develops out of Freud. Both are crucial to the development of the material dialectic between the semiotic and the symbolic that makes up Kristeva’s subject-in-process/on trial. I argue that a clearer understanding of Kristeva’s conception of negativity helps us to better appreciate the force of Kristeva’s challenge, both philosophically and politically. Finally I argue that Kristevan negativity also helps us to clarify the relation between the delimited space of politics and its conditions, laying the groundwork for constitutive exclusion as political critique and opening a space for the possibility of political re-constitutions.

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Notes

  1. Sjöholm (2005, p. 2).

  2. See, for instance, the determinations of reflection in the doctrine of essence, in part two of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Hegel (1998).

  3. See, for instance, Derrida’s Glas (1990), Irigaray’s I Love to You (1996), and Adorno’s Negative Dialectics (1981).

  4. Kristeva (1984, p. 15).

  5. Coole (2000, p. 209).

  6. Kristeva (1984, p. 28).

  7. Kristeva (1984, p. 126).

  8. Kristeva (1984, p. 109).

  9. Beardsworth (2004, p. 50).

  10. Kristeva (1984, p. 28).

  11. Kristeva (1984, p. 24).

  12. Kristeva (1984, p. 109).

  13. Ibid.

  14. One could perhaps compare this practice—including a more radical negativity at the beginning in order to ultimately exclude it—to Hegel’s lectures on world history, in which the peoples of Africa are included in the world order in the beginning, only in order for Spirit to leave Africa, to sublate it, never to return again.

  15. Coole also relies heavily on the language of rhythm in her discussion of negativity, Nietzsche, Hegel, Adorno, Kristeva, and Deleuze.

  16. Kristeva (1984, pp. 26 and 239, fn 12, 13). Kristeva adopts the term chora after the Timaeus, in which Plato describes the chora as the spatial container or the receptacle in which what is appears. As Kristeva notes, chora has an ambiguous ontology, since Plato describes it as something that must be posited as original, and yet is approachable only by means of what he calls a “bastard reasoning.” Cf also Derrida’s essay on chora, “Khōra,” in On the Name (1995).

  17. Ibid.

  18. Kristeva (1984, p. 112).

  19. Coole (2000, p. 206).

  20. Kristeva (1984, p. 27).

  21. Freud (1961, p. 239).

  22. Freud (1961, p. 236).

  23. Hyppolite (1988, p. 294). Hyppolite’s analysis of Hegel, in works such as Logique et existence (1953), was also definitive in the French reception of Hegel.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Freud (1961, p. 237).

  26. Ibid.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Freud (1961, p. 238).

  29. Hyppolite (1988, p. 292).

  30. Hyppolite (1988, p. 293).

  31. Kristeva (1984, p. 149).

  32. Hyppolite (1988, p. 294).

  33. Kristeva (1984, p. 149).

  34. Oliver (1993, p. 44).

  35. Kristeva (1984, pp. 113, 116, 146, and 147, respectively).

  36. Kristeva (1984, pp. 147 and 148, respectively).

  37. Kristeva (1984, p. 151).

  38. Kristeva (1984, p. 112).

  39. Ibid.

  40. While this is beyond the purview of the present piece, Kristeva later abandons the concept of rejection for the concept of abjection in works such as Powers of Horror. Abjection marks what we might call a more violently ambiguous experience: abjection is the marking of not-me, before this not-me is symbolized, or before it can be marked as object, and it is characterized by a simultaneous repulsion and fascination. For reasons both conceptual and peculiar to her own political-theoretical development, Kristeva shifts her analysis from conditions for political revolution in art and literature in works such as Revolution in Poetic Language, to the lack of resources for working through semiotic excess in the symbolic in later works such as Powers of Horror (1982), Tales of Love (1987), and Black Sun (1992). For good analyses of this shift, see Sjöholm (2005) and Beardsworth (2005).

  41. Margaroni (2005, pp. 93-4).

  42. Rose (1993, p. 48). As Rose notes in this article, however, Kristeva may herself be partially responsible for the idea that her work is concerned more with ethics than with politics.

  43. Kristeva (1984, p. 17).

  44. Young (1990, p. 75).

  45. Coole (2000, p. 7).

  46. Sjöholm (2005, p. 35).

  47. Kristeva (1984, p. 14).

  48. Butler (1993); Butler (1997).

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Acknowledgment

Many thanks to Chris Buck, Tina Chanter, Andrew Dilts, Jana MacAuliffe, Heather Rakes, and an anonymous reviewer for Continental Philosophy Review for their invaluable advice in the development of this piece.

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  1. Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Sina Kramer

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Kramer, S. On negativity in Revolution in Poetic Language . Cont Philos Rev 46, 465–479 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-013-9272-y

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