Julia Kristeva

JK is one of the three French feminist theorists whose writings dominated the field of British and especially French and North American literary criticism and humanities scholarship during the 1980s and 1990s. Particularly influential have been her contributions to theories of the body and of the maternal, and to rendering current in academic discourse the terms intertextuality, semiotics, and abjection. Since the twentieth century most of her writing has taken the form of psychoanalytical studies of the human mind, always involving historical witness from literature and art. She has also written novels, some of them mysteries, and a series of biographies of women.

Milestones

24 June 1941

JK was born at Sliven in Bulgaria, one of two daughters.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Miller, Lucasta. “Mother complex”. The Guardian, p. Review 11.
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Winter 1979

JK 's essay Le Temps des femmes was first printed in 33/44 Cahiers de recherche de sciences des textes et documents. As Women's Time it became particularly influential for anglophone feminists.
Moore, Jane. “An other space: a future for feminism?”. New Feminist Discourses, edited by Isobel Armstrong, Routledge, pp. 65-79.
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1980

JK published Desire in Language (full title Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art) and also Pouvoirs de l'horreur (whose English version by Leon Roudiez , Powers of Horror, came out in 1982).
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Volat, Hélène. Julia Kristeva: A Bibliography. http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~hvolat/kristeva/kristeva.htm.

Biography

Birth and Family

24 June 1941

JK was born at Sliven in Bulgaria, one of two daughters.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Miller, Lucasta. “Mother complex”. The Guardian, p. Review 11.
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