Philosophy of the Semiotic: On Julia Kristeva’s Early Work

This year, 2024, marks the 50th anniversary of the original French edition Julia Kristeva’s epoch-making work, La Révolution du langage poétique. L’avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle: Lautréamont et Mallarmé (Revolution in Poetic Language. The Avant-Garde at the End of the XIXth Century: Lauréamont and Mallarmé’). Only the first third of this text dealing with basic theoretical issues has been translated: c.f.: Revolution in Poetic Language (1984). And although references to the last two-thirds of the work in question do exist, they are few and far between.

The aim of the course, then, is to provide a response to the question: what is the philosophical significance of Kristeva’s key concept of the ‘semiotic’? Despite all that has been written on this celebrated term, its philosophical status has yet to be fully determined. To highlight the philosophical status of the semiotic, the psychoanalytic dimension will be put to one side (bracketed). We will, however, begin by providing an explication of the logic of carnival, as it puts in question the notion of the excluded middle that dominates traditional logic. The semiotic is partly captured by the logic of carnival.

Although the English translation of Revolution in Poetic Language is important to our inquiry, it is the application of philosophy to Kristeva’s semiotic approach to the poetic texts of ‘Comte de Lautréamont’ (nom de plume of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (1846-1870)) and the poet, Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), that is of fundamental importance in gaining a deeper appreciation of the semiotic as a philosophical entity.

In short, while Kristeva approaches philosophy from a semiotic perspective, the course endeavours to approach the semiotic from a philosophical perspective. This constitutes the uniqueness of what will be in play in the lectures to come. We will see that the concept of immanence is important in understanding the philosophical import of the semiotic.

Because the historical context of France at the end of the nineteenth century is also significant in relation to the philosophical and revolutionary status of the practice of the semiotic, the course will thus offer a new, philosophical way of illuminating this context.

Lecture One

The aim of this lecture is to provide background to the semiotic through an explication of Kristeva’s invocation of the logic of the carnival. This is a logic that puts in question the primacy of the principle of the excluded middle, viz, one or the other: the 0-1 logic, as opposed to the carnival logic of 0-2. As such, carnival also has the quality of being a medium.

Readings

Kristeva, Julia (1980) ‘Word, Dialogue, and the Novel’ in Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and the Arts, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine and Leon S. Roudiez, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 64-91.
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984) ‘Introduction’ in Rabelais and His World, trans. Helène Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1-58.
Lechte, John (2024) ‘The Meaning and Signification of “Medium”’ in Philosophy of the Medium, London, New York and Dublin: Bloomsbury, 21-38.
Da Silva, Jairo José (2011) ‘On the Principle of Excluded Middle’, Principia 15 (2): 333–347. [For the more technically minded.]
Serres, Michel (2015) ‘Part Three: The Excluded Middle’ in Rome: First Book of Foundations, 115-190, London and New York: Bloomsbury. [This is for those who wish to follow up on the theme of the excluded middle.]

Lecture Two

This lecture will explore two key moments in the history of philosophy that contribute to the development of the concept of the semiotic. The first of these is Plato’s much discussed notion of ‘chora’ (also:‘khôra’). We want to know in what sense ‘chora’ gives rise to the semiotic. Here reference will also be made to Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of Plato’s ‘chora’. The second key moment is Husserl’s concept of ‘hyle’ (matter/data of sensation) in relation to meaning and the positing of the transcendental Ego. Is ‘sensation’ the basis of the semiotic? And what of positing the ego/subject? A response will be given to both these questions. Also to be considered is Husserl’s invocation of the epochē (bracketing, ‘parenthesizing’ or reduction) as the basis of philosophy.

Readings

Kristeva, Julia (1984) Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller, New York: Columbia University Press, 25-26; 31-37; 66-67, 109-118, 239 n.13.
Plato. (1980), Timaeus, in PLATO: THE COLLECTED DIALOGUES, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, trans. Benjamin Jowett, Bollingen Series LXXI, Tenth Printing, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1995) Khôra’ in On the Name, trans. Ian McLeod, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 89-130.
Hope, Alexander (2015) ‘Khōra – plus de métaphore’, Textual Practice, 29 (4), 611-630,
Lechte, John (2023) ‘Julia Kristeva: Chora, Infinity, Modernism’, in Maria Margaroni, ed.,
Understanding Kristeva, Understanding Modernism, New York and London: Bloomsbury, 40-44.
Sallis, John. (1999), ‘The Χώρα [chora]’ in Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 91-124.
Husserl, Edmund (1982)., Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy: First book, trans, F. Kersten, Dordrecht: Kluwer, §8, §32.
Williford, Kenneth (2013) ‘Husserl’s hyletic data and phenomenal consciousness’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 12 (3), 501-519.

Lecture Three

Also relevant to the emergence of the semiotic as philosophical entity is Hegel’s concept of ‘negativity’ (also called ‘rejection’ by Kristeva) to be distinguished from the logical form of ‘negation’. Compared to negation, negativity has a dynamic, open-ended quality: it enables a certain transcendence of the present moment. Of equal importance, as we shall see, is the Hegelian notion of ‘force’.

Also to be considered as to how it might illuminate the semiotic is Heidegger’s notion of ‘care’ or ‘cura’ (Lat.). Of interest, too, but to a lesser degree than previous notions discussed is différance proposed by Jacques Derrida’s philosophy. In sum, the lecture will then set out how the semiotic is informed by negativity, force, care and différance.

To what degree, however, is the semiotic more than a synthesis of philosophical influences and becomes a philosophical entity in its own right?

Readings

Kristeva, Julia (1984) Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller, New York: Columbia University Press, 109-146.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977) Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 79-103.
Heidegger, Martin (1978) Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 83-84, 157, 241-44, 329-331, 416,
Derrida, Jacques (1982). ‘Différance’ in Margins of philosophy, trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 3-27.

Lecture Four

This lecture addresses the philosophy of poetic language and the context of France at the end of the nineteenth century. We define poetic language and examine key passages from Kristeva’s interpretation of the work of Lautréamont and Mallarmé as an incarnation of the semiotic. The question is: how does philosophy illuminate poetic language? Does poetic language prompt us to think philosophically?

By way of comparison, we will refer to the relationship between philosophy and poetry in Heidegger’s reading of Stefan George’s poem, Das Wort (The Word).

Readings.

Kristeva, Julia (1984) Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller, New York: Columbia University Press, 217-234.
Kristeva, Julia (1974) La Révolution du langage poétique. L’avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle: Lautréamont et Mallarmé, 210-230. (Translation provided).
Lechte, John (1990) Julia Kristeva, London and New York: Routledge, 140-153.
Heidegger, Martin (1982) ‘Words’ [Das Wort] in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz, New York, Harper & Row Perennial Library, 139-156.
Biographical info on Lautréamont: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Lautr%C3%A9amont
Biographical info on Mallarmé: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phae_Mallarm%C3%A9

Lecture Five

This lecture focuses on the philosophy of the semiotic. Rather than asking what, in the first instance, the semiotic is, we ask about the nature of philosophy. Here, Levinas may be invoked: philosophy is the counterpart of naïveté. For Husserl, philosophy is the counterpart of the ‘natural attitude’. Is it the case then that philosophy is the counterpart of immanence?

In this, we face the following dilemma: if, as Kristeva would say, philosophy essentially participates in the Symbolic order, how can it do justice to an entity that underpins this order? It will be shown that at issue here is the poetic/sacrificial origin attributed by Kristeva to the Symbolic. Some consideration will be given to this. Part of the answer to our question regarding the outside of the Symbolic emerges through the relation between immanence (the semiotic) and transcendence. In this regard it will be argued that transcendence is prior to immanence, that is, is prior to sacrifice.

Readings.

Kristeva, Julia (1984) Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller, New York: Columbia University Press, 70-85.
Levinas, E. (1969) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 21-30.
Lechte, John (2020) ‘Language, Literature, and the Founding Murder in the Work of Julia Kristeva’ in Sara S. Beardsworth, ed., The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva, Chicago: Open Court, Library of Living Philosophers, 121-132.