Emilia Angelova 
‘Revolution in Poetic Language’ Fifty Years Later 
New Directions in Kristeva Studies

In her 1974
Revolution in Poetic Language, Julia Kristeva resisted the abstract use of language, with its aim of totalization and finality, in all its colonizing and alienating forms. A major thinker and critic, Kristeva reappropriated Hegel’s concepts of desire and negativity, in conjunction with the thought of Heidegger, Arendt, Freud, and Lacan, to revolt against modernity’s culture of nihilism and the West’s inability to deal with loss. This collection celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of
Revolution in Poetic Language by revisiting Kristeva’s oeuvre and establishing exciting new directions in Kristeva studies. Engaging with queer and transgender studies, disability studies, decolonial studies, and more, renowned and rising scholars plot continuities in—and push the boundaries of—Kristeva’s thinking about loss, revolution, and revolt. The volume also includes two essays by Kristeva, translated into English for the first time here—’The Impossibility of Loss’ (1988) and ‘Of What Use Are Poets in Times of Distress?’ (2016).

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Editor’s Acknowledgments



Introduction: Revolutionary Practice and the Subject-in-Process


Emilia Angelova




Part One: Two New Texts by Kristeva



1. Editor’s Introduction to Julia Kristeva’s ‘The Impossibility of Loss’ (1988)


Emilia Angelova



2. The Impossibility of Loss


Julia Kristeva, translated by Elisabeth Paquette



3. Of What Use Are Poets in Times of Distress?


Julia Kristeva, translated by Elisabeth Paquette and Alice Jardine




Part Two Beyond Feminism: Engaging Kristeva for Decolonial, Trans, and Disability Studies



4. Julia Kristeva’s Maternal Ethics of Tenderness


Kelly Oliver



5. Kristeva in a Trans Poetic Frame


Sid Hansen



6. Stranger than Other Strangers: On the Crossroads between Subjectivity and Language in Kristeva and Anzaldúa


Fanny Söderbäck



7. Theories of Poetic Resistance: Julia Kristeva and Sylvia Wynter


Elisabeth Paquette



8. Proust among the Patients: Kristeva on Proust, Psychoanalysis, and Politics


Elaine P. Miller




Part Three The Evolving Meaning of Ontological Loss: From Revolution to Revolt



9. From Praxis to Chōra: The Filter of (In)Humanization in Julia Kristeva’s Early Work


Miglena Nikolchina



10. The Mental Image and the Spectacular Imaginary: Kristeva with Lacan and Sartre


Surti Singh



11. Rhythm and the Semiotic in Revolution in Poetic Language


John Montani



12. Excription and the Negativity of the Speaking Subject: Reading Kristeva with Heidegger


Emilia Angelova



13. Kristeva and Arendt on Language, Sanity, and the
Sensus Communis
Anne O’Byrne



About the Contributors

Index

Mengenai Pengarang

Emilia Angelova is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University. She is the editor of
The Necessity of Freedom in Hegel: Logic, Phenomenology and Aesthetics.