Semiotic, Maternal (Kristeva)

Julia Kristeva (1941-), a Bulgarian-French philosopher, cultural theorist, novelist, and psychoanalyst, has been critiqued as promoting an essentialist and thus foreclosed notion of woman and the female body, while others argue that her theorizing of non-unified and multiple subjectivity actually undermines essentialism and highlights revolutionary potential for social order change. While Kristeva is often categorized as a French feminist, in league with Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, her work resists the political, including feminism; instead, she privileges psychoanalysis. Kristeva's theories have been considered as lending many possibilities for feminism and feminist projects; in particular, her theories on identity, difference, and maternity espouse potential for the expansion of the subjectivity and agency of subjects.