For a long time, I struggled with 'The Portable Kristeva,' 'Black Sun,' 'Powers of Horror,' and the 'Kristeva Reader,' but I've finally found a great, accessible introduction to Kristeva's writing on psychoanalysis and the problems of modern culture.

Kristeva sees a generation of materialists who have abandoned old ways of finding spiritual coherence. What we've lost, Kristeva says, is an understanding of the soul. Kristeva isn't arguing that the soul exists - she simply argues that we no longer think of our lives in terms of a soul, so we no longer have a language to express our spiritual wholeness. This leads to a fragmentation of our lives that leaves us feeling alone, but not one, and transforms our lives into thousands of broken experiences, broken senses, broken values. We are unable to find perspective, unable to assign meaning; instead, our subjectivity is shattered.

Kristeva weaves her gorgeous narrative concerning the loss of the soul with a series of clinical/critical discussions of specific patients and issues in psychoanalysis. Here we find stimulating applications of Freud and Lacan that are disturbingly compelling, and constitute some of the most brilliant and most accessible writings in the history of psychoanalysis.

This is a great book for people interested in psychology, critical theory, religion, feminism, or just a very intelligent book on the new maladies afflicting the modern soul, the new ways in which we're all disintegrating, and a new vision for the relationship of language and the psyche, a suggestion for the revitalization of the soul as a way of relating to ourselves.

One of the most renowned researchers in the field of Social Studies, Kristeva has gone deeply in the facts of the soul in our modern world, exercising her acute views on the disturbs that affect the human soul. The two halves of the book: The clinic and History lead us through a path full of novelties regarding the presence of man/woman in this world and how this very world causes so many new diseases...not only in the body, but mainly in the soul of them. Lacan and Freud would be surprised to see how their works were so consitently revisited

Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement Anna Smith MacMillan Press. 1996. I picked up this book with some interest as I had had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Smith lecture on Kristeva whilst I was at Canterbury. This review is going to be fairly general given that the books editor has warned me not to be too 'technical.' When I was reading the book I felt that it was important for two main reasons. It seems to me that one of the things one's time at university should do (and this seems to happen rarely) is to open the minds of its students, to make them ask questions, both about themselves and their relationship with society. Questioning the system is something which I fear does not happen enough in the post-rogernomic age of blah. This book (through the writings of Kristeva) questions the relationship of the individual to the language(s) that they use. For Kristeva, Smith, and many other writers this is an important beginning when analysing scoiety; especially when one is looking at those not as priviliged as the majority of us here at Victoria. For it is through language that we gain the framework that we use to build up our perception of the world. Smith's reading of Kristeva is aimed at giving us a new way of seeing our relationship to language; specifically the ways in which women are constructed within our (primarily) male language. Secondly I find it heartening that a New Zealander is interacting at an intellectual level with one of the major philosophers of the late twentieth century. But then what is there to stop us? We, as a nation have a great many problems and it is only by dealing with the essentials, by engaging people, that we are going to make this country a better place. That is why I think that YOU should read this book.

This book picks up Western love as main theme and analyzes its both diachronic and synchronic aspects. In the first part, Kristeva shows her theory of love as the theory of psychoanalysis. It is very interesting here that her attention is concentrated on transference in psychoanalysis. Then, with this theory of love, we can read histories of Western love from Plato, the Bible, Narcissus, to St. Thomas and heroes and heroines in love stories such as Don Juan, Romeo and Juliet, and Mary. These histories and stories are in harmony with the next part in which Kristeva analyzes discourses of love in texts of Troubadour, Jeanne Guyon, Baudelaire, Stendhale, and Bataille. Reading here, we can learn what Western love has ever been, which enables us to think about modern love. Finally, Kristeva mentions to the crisis of love, which emerges now because of the abolition of psychic space and discusses psychoanalytic role, especially, transferencefs one. Kristeva shows various aspects of Western love as a mosaic of histories, stories, and texts, which are connected logically each other by psychoanalysis and the theory of love. Therefore, this book has a very clear composition. This is why I like this book. Another reason is that I am interested in Kristevafs idea which differentiates Western love from Japanese one. I think that she also shows how to approach Japanese love which has been thought to be changed dynamically these years, not only Western one.

The Kristeva Reader is a good, even great, introduction to the work of Julia Kristeva. Some of Kristeva's most important works are brilliantly exerpted in readable prose by Toril Moi. Lovers of linguistics, rhetoric, literary theory, and psychology will find Kristeva's work compelling. One interesting aspect of the text is that it offers the reader a glimpse into the creative process. In an early essay, "Word, Dialogue, and Novel," Kristeva responds to the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin. Her later essay, "Revolution in Poetic Language," shows the evolution of Kristeva's language theory. Unfortunately, in order to make Kristeva accessible, Moi had to make some difficult choices in her editing. A serious scholar will undoubtedly find herself looking for the complete essays in another text.

This is one of my most cherished volumes of critical theory. Any self-respecting lit student should own this tome, and read it carefully. Many useful pieces for different scenarios.

...abjection (If you also read 'Powers of Horror' by Kristeva) Quite comprehensive altough it would be hard to make a choice in the work of Kristeva. Kristeva's work focuses heavily on semiotics and women's role in politics and religion. Many of the theories will stir the soul, especially 'Stabat Mater' if you grew up forced into any european or western dogma. 'Women's Time' is a good possible evaluation of women and politics. Freud gets thrown into this in a very different manner than one expects, which leaves us to wonder, is Kristeva supporting the old 'Dr.' or not?

In this book Kristeva takes on the issues of language and psychoanalysis, expanding upon Lacan's views on desire and language. (Lacan said: All speech is demand, the demand for love). Kristeva is considered a genius in her field, and highly respected in France (where all this work goes on nowadays). Here she is presented in translation so that the English-reading world can enjoy her work.

The interest in such theories of language, semiotics, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis is slim in the English speaking world, and this is unfortunate. Not enough scholars of language look to Lacan and Kristeva, but they should. The text is difficult, and even more so in translation, but it is worth struggling through. However, for the reader with little background in the subject matter, penetrating Kristeva's work may be almost impossible without guidance.

This book is subtitled 'a semiotic approach to literature and art'. What Kristeva does is apply her theories to the area of aesthetics, especially her specialty area of the novel. Unfortunately, her studies are naturally based on the French novel (19th century), so readers unfamiliar with novellists such as Mallarme might have a problem following this aspect of her work.

This book is an exmaple of the "new emperor clothes" effect. Only the 'clever' people can 'understand' it, and other people are afraid to say that don't undertsand, because then they will not be regarded clever.

The previous reviewer clearly did not understand this intricate and admittedly difficult work in the least - it is certainly NOT an example of the "emperor has no clothes" syndrome. It is, however, a challenging and complicated work that presumes a good deal of exposure to continental philosophy (especially the phenomonologies of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger) and Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis. Kristeva does an impresive and convincing - as well as constructive - job of tying together these overlapping philosophical/ideolgical traditions and ties them into notions of how a subject comes to exist as such in and through a world of language... Going behind the mis-en-abime of Lacan and beyond the linguistic monism of postsrtucturalism, Kristeva gives a living, breathing account of these different themes (of which the previous reviewer seem utterly unaware - but then again, philosophy can be hard)....more later...

Julia Kristeva is one of the most rigorous academics of the 20th Century, and if you haven't already read extensively in philosophy, psychology, late 19th-century literature, and linguistics, this book will prove very difficult.

The introduction is fascinating, and provides an excellent overview of Kristeva's thought. It also includes useful information on some of Kristeva's contemporaries and influences. However, diving into the primary source readings is no easy task. The reader is immediately bombarded by obscure references to Freud, German words appropriated from Hegel and (unexplained) applied to semiotics and linguistics in complicated ways, and references to classical and late-19th-century literature that assume a great deal of prior knowledge on the part of the reader.

For those of you who have never heard of, for example, Mallarme, have never read Hegel, and are relatively new to psychology, there are a few interesting things for you. As I said, the introduction is excellent. Also, Kristeva's discussion of love and depression is beautifully written and BRILLIANT - you'll find that her writing stirs your most private memories and emotions in ways that no other writer can. But you'll also find that 70% of the book is frustratingly incomprehensible. Kristeva is sometimes easy to read, and sometimes impossible. It depends on the passage.

For those of you who do have substantial prior knowledge, this reader provides an extraordinary selection of Kristeva's work, and it's a great way to gain a broad (and often relatively deep) knowledge of the whole range of Kristeva's work.

The most interesting sections of this work are the earliest chapters; Kristeva seems to run out of steam and stop abruptly once she begins to discuss foreignness and strangeness in contemporary culture. The writing is also very abstract (perhaps more so because it is a translation); this particular book is probably only interesting to a student of literature who is critically concerned with the figure of the Stranger in fiction and legends. I don't recommend picking this book up simply out of curiousity.