ABSTRACT
Kristeva’s work within the psychoanalytic frame and that the related concepts of foreignness and femininity are also crucial in her work. Hence, Smith also dedicates part of
questioning of “human”, reject psychoanalysis as unscientific and by-pass Kristeva’s commitment to a Freudian discourse. On the other hand, her work is also a departure from tradition when she proposes the re-assignment2 of the paternal function to the maternal disposition. Like Smith, Doane and Hodges (1992) insist on a repositioning of Kristevan thinking within the psychoanalytic frame; but they also emphasise Kristeva’s often neglected indebtedness to Object Relation Theory. Julia Kristeva’s work can be positioned on both sides of this theoretical debate. As early as 1974, with the publication of La Révolution du langage poétique, she introduces and develops the idea that in his/her separation from the maternal realm and subsequent existence in paternal society, the subject is not as clearly cut off from the maternal as the more traditional Freudian approach suggested. In this, Kristeva follows Melanie Klein and her supporters. Klein had already introduced the idea of a primitive ‘subjectivity’, antecedent to the encounter with the Oedipal father:
Some of my conclusions about the earliest stages of infancy are a continuation of Freud’s discoveries; on certain points, however, divergencies have arisen, one of which is very relevant to my present topic. I am referring to my contention that object relations are operative from the beginning of post-natal life. (Mitchell, 1991: 204)
Freud’s theories on infant object relation remained for Klein inconsistent, at times alluding to the pre-Oedipal subject’s ‘libidinal attachment to an object’ (Mitchell, 1991: 205) and at other times conceiving of the infant’s libidinal energy as operating ‘in vacuo’ (Mitchell, 1991: 206). Laplanche and Pontalis (1988) succinctly outline Freud’s ambivalence vis-à-vis a possible structuring of the pre-Oedipal subject:
As for the possibility of a preoedipal structure, Freud’s own position was always reserved. He did acknowledge that he had been late in recognising the full implications of the primal link to the mother, admitting that the findings brought forward on the preoedipal phase in girls -particularly by women analysts-had taken him by surprise. But these facts, Freud felt, could still be explained without necessarily having recourse to a frame of reference other than the Oedipal one. (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1988: 285)
her critique to a discussion of the translation of Kristeva and how it links to foreignity and sexual identity.
