Kristevan theory: meanings, contexts, feminist "uses"

Abstract

In the first two sections of this thesis, I interpret aspects of Kristeva's theories and contextualise her thought by means of original insights and some secondary materiaI also include a series of twenty-one art-works as a fictocritical gesture within the text. It becomes clear that there are radical differences between Kristevan thought and contemporary French feminism, aspects of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, postmodemism, and other contemporary theory. I demonstrate that none of these categories or theories can adequately contain Kristevan thought and that her roots in, or resonances with existential philosophy are most important. I particularly stress connections between Kristevan, Sartrean, and Beauvoirian existentialism: Kristevan subjectivity and Sartrean Being, subjective non-specificity and existential nothing, nothingness, or negativity, and Kristevan abjection and Sartrean dread, anguish, and nausea. No one has previously made these connections. In the final section of this thesis, extrapolated aspects from all of these areas are used to detennine the "usefulness" of Kristevan theory for contemporary feminisms. Such"usefulness" includes value in reading across other texts. I conclude that the most important "use" for Kristevan theory is as a "building block" in conjunction with other theory, in productive feminist speculations on possible female subjectivities (melding Kristevan and other theory) and alternative utopian and dystopian visions of female and feminist lives and futures. It seems that the experimental and uncertain spaces of such visions may be tentatively approached by means of a dramatic refiguring of Kristevan and other theory in order to decide more fulfilling, radically other possibilities which have not yet been realised.