ABSTRACT
Aiming to politicise theory and to theorise politics, the Tel Quel journal could be regarded as a training ground for textual activism. Originally conceived as a publication promoting a new kind of aesthetic, it gradually came to aspire towards subversion of those areas of life not usually considered political: aesthetics, culture and family life. Theory was the means to effect such all-encompassing subversion, not only substituting but also dismissing political discourse as a weapon for actual political change. The fact that the site of the political is displaced onto aesthetic practices is regarded as a problem by Cooler Kristeva's politics runs the risk of being reduced to ethics or aesthetics. In her writings on femininity and dissidence, Kristeva's theory of negativity takes on flesh and substance, showing how the feminine is irreducible to the gender identity of woman and defiant of any mode of ‘cultural construction’.
