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Theories of Religion: Julia Kristeva, Language, and Identity Creation

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Julia Kristeva
1941-Present
French Post-Structuralist
Born in Bulgaria.
Paris for doctoral research under supervision of top French intellectuals.
Influenced by Freud and Psychoanalysis.
Currently holds three professorships in France, Toronto, and New York.
“I usually call myself an adopted-American Frenchwoman of Bulgarian origin with a European citizenship.” –JK
26+ works of writing ranging from essays to novels between 1969-2011:
            Politics and Science of Language – 1970s
            Psychoanalytics – 1980s
Novels – 1990s
Monographs – 2000s
Class Notes:
Speaking subject – the subject gains subjectivity perhaps by speaking. “The self” suggests something fixed and self-contained.

Subjectivity is a process developed over time and is influenced by own’s culture, language, etc. Subjectivity deals with a sense of one’s self, a subject who can think and act of one’s own accord. Subjectivity is not a given for post-structuralists. Thus, identity/subjectivity is not a fixed phenomenon, but is always changing and being fashioned by outside forces.

Language is part of the process of becoming a subject. It is not a tool that a subject uses, but rather it is integral to the formation of a subject. Beings become self-aware through the use of language. Language is what marks and reinforces the separation between a child and her or his mother. The two components of language are Semiotic and Symbolic.
Key Terms:
Semiotic (feminine, rhythmic, tonal, extra-verbal way that energy and emotion enters into language, unconscious drives and desires, not dictated by linear logic, associated with dance, music, poetry, and infancy)
Symbolic (masculine, uses signs to represent ideas, exemplified by the language used in law and science, a mode of signifying with as little ambiguity as possible. masks unconscious drives and desires).
These two modes of language are both essential. They are intertwined in the process of making meaning. Meaning is often found in words accompanied by feeling, tone, pitch of the voice, etc.
Chora – psychic space of the infant; state of plenitude and satisfying oneness with the caregiver; pre-symbolic.
Use of language to identify other objects is the threshold of subjectivity. It is with language and the identifying of other people and things that an infant begins to recognize herself or himself. Abjection is the means of carrying out identity creation.
Abjection – rejection of what is other to oneself in order to maintain the tenuous boundaries of one’s self; bridge between plentitude and individuation. Includes the bodily repulsion of substances, including food loathing. Such substances are said to blur the lines of the symbolic and the symbiotic, between subject and object, making it both horrifying and interesting. In the world of religious terminology, abjection is captured in the word “sin.” This is also found in infancy, termed the “maternal abjection,” when an infant begins to see the mother as something other than her or his self.
The Mother also desires the Other (agape). This love for the Other gives the infant space to recognize the difference between her or his self and the Mother. The Mother’s love for the Other triggers abjection in the infant. Kristeva then introduces the concept that, for the infant, “God” becomes the replacement for the Mother.
Theory of Religion:
What most defines religion for Kristeva is religion’s ability to purify the abject. Religion maps out the boundaries of the self and protects it from that which is abject. Religion attempts to identify and repel that with which one should not associate. Religion offers a system for establishing identity by abjecting that which is revolting to or threatens the identity of the self.
Critiques:

Kristeva has been criticized by some who say she defines complete subjectivity in terms of motherhood.
Sources:
Stephen Berkwitz, class lecture and discussion, Missouri State University, November 19 and 21, 2013.

Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection and Semiotics of Biblical Abomination,” “Credence-Credit and Credo,” “Stabat Mater,” “Psychoanalysis – a Counterdepressant and Holbein’s Dead Christ,” “The Chosen People and the Choice of Foreignness,” and “Reading the Bible” in French Feminists on Religion: A Readered. by Morny Joy, Kathleen O’Grady, and Judith L. Poxon (New York: Routledge, 2002), 83-171.

Theories of Religion:

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