The Possible in the Life and Work of Julia Kristeva

Abstract

A mode to address “the possible” in Julia Kristeva’s work is from the perspective of her concept chora, inspired by Plato’s similar term from his dialogue Timaeus. It is important to stress first the open character of Kristeva’s semiotic chora, and of the choral phenomena that take place in the semiotic chora in the process of the definition of the subject. Kristeva’s signifying subject is never fixed, but always in process, or in trail. Always in conflict with the symbolic function, and in revolt against prohibitions, the subject constantly searches for new possibilities of expression. The affective and conflictual phenomena, such as sensation, mood, and memory, situation and accident exceed the law of signification and determination of the subject in process. Kristeva’s chora makes room for the undetermined and undeterminable possible, challenging determination, fixity or stasis, and giving an insight into the extralinguistic processes, into the origins. In the absence of the semiotic chora, the humanities would remain “archivistic, archaeological, and necrophiliac” (Kristeva, RPL 1974, p. 13). The semiotic makes possible to express the unquantifiable processes, like poetic language, and the ephemeral arts that would never be inscribed in the process of signification. Kristeva’s view of art as the only means by which jouissance (pleasure) can infiltrate the symbolic order opens up to unexpected possibilities for signifying (poetic) subject. It gives poetry incomparable powers of expression. Creation emerges as a process of transformation of the semiotic into the symbolic, always a process of becoming, in which the possible manifests itself.