ABSTRACT
By 1980, American feminism had turned mainstream: It had followed many twisted and roundabout paths, had taken bold initiatives, and had cleverly adjusted to political realities while influencing them and attempting to counter the backlash; and after shaping the debates aimed to stop the movement, women's issues became central to the country's politics. Like other social movements, feminism had developed its stronghold in universities around the country among students, graduate assistants, and young professors. Feminists were joined and encouraged by academic women who had been given adjunct positions, who had been relegated to part-time jobs and instructorships, and who, because chained to their husbands' jobs, had been exploited. Basically, Julia Kristeva was out to articulate the psychic processes that language normally glosses over by focusing on meaning or sense, by bridging the apparent dualism of the semiotic/symbolic division, and by transposing what goes on in the psychoanalytic process to the realm of language.
