ABSTRACT
The speaking subject speaks-but not always. The speaking subject is embodied, but that embodiment can be read as a text. Dividing itself and yet also bringing together difference, the speaking subject is embedded in a difference between the semiotic and the symbolic or between indirect language and a pure language. These characteristics of the speaking subject link together two philosophical enterprises that might on the surface appear to be radically different, namely, those ofjulia Kristeva and Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Julia Kristeva entered the philosophical scene in a significant way in 1969 with a volume of essays entitled Semiotike. This was only two years after Derrida's initial contribution in Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, and Speech and Phenomena; and yet it was also only eight years after the death of Merleau-Ponty. Kristevas major theoretical statement, however, came in 1974 with her Revolution in Poetic Language. While portions of Semiotike along with essays from a later volume Polylogue (1977) were collected together in English as Desire in Language, the English translation of La Revolution du langagepoetique did not appear until 1984 (ten years after its initial publication). As a these d'etat, it was crucial that the volume be comprehensive, theoretically well-formulated, and embellished adequately with practical implications-and indeed the French version is precisely that. What was translated into English (and much earlier into German) is only the first (theoretical) portion of the book. Hence all the "practical" readings of particular texts are left for a future translation.
