Julia Kristeva facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Julia Kristeva
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Kristeva in 2008
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Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva
24 June 1941 Sliven, Bulgaria
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| Alma mater | University of Sofia |
| Spouse(s) | Philippe Sollers |
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| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
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Main interests
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Notable ideas
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Influences
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Influenced
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Julia Kristeva (born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French thinker. She is a philosopher, literary critic, semiotician (someone who studies signs and symbols), psychoanalyst, feminist, and novelist. She has lived in France since the mid-1960s.
Kristeva has taught at Columbia University and is now a professor at Université Paris Cité. She has written over 30 books, including famous ones like Powers of Horror and Tales of Love. She has received many important awards, such as the Holberg International Memorial Prize and the Hannah Arendt Prize.
Her ideas became very important in areas like cultural studies and feminism after her first book, Semeiotikè, was published in 1969. Her work explores topics like intertextuality (how texts relate to each other), the semiotic (a concept related to early language), and abjection (a feeling of disgust or horror). She is a key figure in structuralism and poststructuralism, which are ways of thinking about how language and society are built.
Kristeva also started the Simone de Beauvoir Prize committee, which honors people who work for women's rights.
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Life and Education
Julia Kristeva was born in Sliven, Bulgaria, on June 24, 1941. Her parents were Christian, and her father was a church accountant. She and her sister went to a French-speaking school run by nuns.
She studied at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria. In December 1965, when she was 24, she received a special scholarship that allowed her to move to France. There, she continued her studies at different French universities. She learned from important scholars like Roland Barthes. On August 2, 1967, Kristeva married the novelist Philippe Sollers.
In the early 1970s, Kristeva taught at Columbia University in the United States, where she is still a visiting professor.
Kristeva's Ideas
After joining a group called 'Tel Quel', Kristeva became very interested in how language works and its connection to politics. She also trained as a psychoanalyst, earning her degree in 1979. Her work often combines ideas from psychoanalysis with poststructuralist thinking.
She believes that a person's identity is not fixed but is always "in process" or changing. This idea challenges older views that saw identity as something stable. She also traveled to China in the 1970s and later wrote a book called About Chinese Women.
The Semiotic and the Symbolic
One of Kristeva's most important ideas is that meaning in language comes from two parts: the symbolic and the semiotic. The semiotic is different from the general study of signs called semiotics.
The semiotic is linked to early childhood experiences, before a baby fully understands language. It's about feelings, rhythms, and sounds, rather than clear meanings. It's like the musical or poetic side of language, which is less structured. Kristeva connects this to the "feminine" and the very early stage when a baby doesn't yet see itself as separate from its mother.
When a child starts to recognize themselves as separate from others, they enter the symbolic realm. This is where language develops, and the child learns to use words to express ideas. In her book Desire in Language (1980), Kristeva explains that the symbolic is where a child becomes a "speaking subject" and forms an identity apart from their mother.
This process of separating from the mother is called abjection. It means the child has to move away from the mother to join the world of language, culture, and society. The symbolic world of language is linked to rules and structure. Kristeva believes that even after entering the symbolic world, people still move back and forth between the semiotic and the symbolic. This means our identity is always changing, not fixed.
Kristeva also writes about intertextuality. This is the idea that all texts are connected and influence each other.
Society and Identity
Kristeva believes that how individuals form their identity is similar to how societies are built. Just as a child separates from the mother to become an individual, societies create their identity by setting boundaries and sometimes excluding certain things, like the "maternal" or "feminine" aspects.
Feminism and Identity
Julia Kristeva is considered a key figure in French feminism, alongside other important thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir. Her ideas have greatly influenced feminist studies in many countries.
Kristeva has talked about different types of feminism. While she supports women's rights, she has also expressed concerns about some feminist ideas. She believes that focusing too much on group identity (like "women" as a single group) can be less helpful than focusing on individual identity and experiences. She thinks it's important to understand how language and personal experiences shape who we are.
Novels
Kristeva has also written several novels, which are often like detective stories. While they have exciting plots, they also explore the deep ideas from her philosophical work. Her characters often show their personalities through their thoughts and feelings. Her novels include The Old Man and the Wolves and Murder in Byzantium. She once described Murder in Byzantium as "a kind of anti-Da Vinci Code".
Awards and Recognition
Julia Kristeva has received many honors for her important contributions to thinking and writing:
- In 2004, she won the Holberg International Memorial Prize for her "innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture and literature."
- She received the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought in 2006.
- She has also been awarded the Commander of the Legion of Honor and the Commander of the Order of Merit, which are high honors in France.
- She also received the Vaclav Havel Prize.
- In 2019, she was given an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Portugal.
Allegations of Past Collaboration
In 2018, a commission in Bulgaria stated that Kristeva had been an informant for the Committee for State Security (a former secret service) under the code name "Sabina." These claims suggest she was recruited in 1971, several years after she moved to France. At that time, it was very difficult for Bulgarians to travel abroad without government approval.
Kristeva has strongly denied these allegations, calling them "grotesque and false." Some people, like writer Neal Ascherson, have suggested that the information she supposedly provided was not very important. He wrote that she seemed to have shared mostly gossip, which could have been found in public newspapers. He believed that the value of her reports was "almost zero."
See also
In Spanish: Julia Kristeva para niños
- Capacity to be alone
- Écriture féminine
- Khôra
- List of thinkers influenced by deconstruction
