ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we look at how the work of Julia Kristeva paved the way for the development of a field of edusemiotics. She identified three generations of feminist thinking. The first of these argued for equality between men and women, which involves a restructuring of the belief sets of both sexes and a restructuring of the relationships between them in both material and discursive ways. The second generation of feminist thought and praxis is where the woman and the girl-child are understood not as a universal set of categories but as having their own embodied definition and structure. This is a commitment to difference in an essentialised form. The third generation of feminist thinking is not concerned with a universal equality between the sexes, nor a fixed and gendered sense of identity, but instead argues for an approach that respects ambiguity and non-identity and thus embraces bodily difference and a sense of being in history. Kristeva's feminism, while still reflecting a particular psychoanalytical viewpoint about women and men and a separation between the two, also encompasses notions of multiple sexual identities and is opposed to a singular feminine language and valuation. All of this and more have implications for an edusemiotic theory of learning and curriculum.
