Julia Kristeva s most remarkable contribution to modern thought has been her revelation of how preverbal experience -- the "unspeakable" -- enters language through the processes of literature, art and psychoanalysis to become "speakable." These early experiences then reemerge in poetic, infantile, maternal and spiritual ways, or simply as the expression of suffering. Kristeva s work is therefore of great significance in the fields of literary study, critical theory and psychoanalysis. This concise introductory study examines Kristeva in the light of her activity as writer, teacher and psychoanalyst. Anne-Marie Smith draws attention to the conceptual coherence and evolution of Kristeva s thinking over the last thirty years and provides close readings of Kristeva s original texts, new translations and firsthand accounts of Kristeva s lectures. Kristeva s influence in Anglo-American thought is set against her place in the French intellectual tradition. The author emphasizes Kristeva s involvement in public cultural activity and personal commitment to psychoanalytic practice as well as her insistent examination of the place of women and of foreignness in social structures. Smith focuses on specific later texts, referring back to the seminal work, to give a sense of chronology and interconnectedness while concentrating on certain fundamental concepts.
