I discovered a blog that I really find interesting.  It is entitled “The Rumpus.net” and is about culture.  The posting which caught my attention is the author’s paean to one of my heroes, Julia Kristeva, who I feel is one of the best critical thinkers/writers of our time.  The author describes his “love” of Kristeva, based on her critical mind but also on her beautiful face on the cover of one of her most important books, The Powers of Horror.  I could relate completely.  I was taken with that book and also found that she was beautiful.

One of her teachers and mentors, Roland Barthes, describes what it is about Kristeva that I find so intriguing:  she changes the order of things; she always destroys the latest preconception, the one we thought we could be comforted by, the one of which we could  be proud.  What she displaces is the already-said, that is to say, the insistence of the signified.  What she subverts is the authority of monologic science and of filiation.

In short, she is very subversive.  She questions “the assumptions in which we are drenched” (Adrienne Rich)

Julia Kristeva changes the order of things: she always destroys the latest preconception, the one we thought we could be comforted by, the one of which we could be proud: what she displaces is the already-said, that is to say, the insistence of the signified; what she subverts is the authority of monologic science and of filiation.”