Overview

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year Finalist for the 2021 Prose Awards (Biography & Autobiography category) At the Risk of Thinking is the first biography of Julia Kristeva--one of the most celebrated intellectuals in the world. Alice Jardine brings Kristeva's work to a broader readership by connecting Kristeva’s personal journey, from her childhood in Communist Bulgaria to her adult life as an international public intellectual based in Paris, with the history of her ideas. Informed by extensive interviews with Kristeva herself, this telling of a remarkable woman’s life story also draws out the complexities of Kristeva’s writing, emphasizing her call for an urgent revival of bold interdisciplinary thinking in order to understand--and to act in--today’s world.

Full Product Details

Author:   Prof Alice Jardine (Harvard University, USA) ,  Professor Mari Ruti (University of Toronto, Canada)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic USA
Weight:   0.608kg
ISBN:  

9781501341342

ISBN 10:   1501341340
Pages:   400
Publication Date:   23 January 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Author's Note Introduction: At the Risk of Thinking The Question of the Intellectual-Again In the Face of Resistance My Coup de Foudre Why Now? The Contestatory Intellectual Notes on the Biography Part I Bulgaria, My Suffering (1941-1965) A Production of History Stoyan Kristev All My Childhood Was Bathed in This Kristina Kristeva One Spoonful at a Time I Didn't Want to Take Care of All That The Journalist Pure Oxygen The Writer Sputnik or the New Novel Endings, Beginnings Part II The Crazy Truth of It (1965-1979) Early Exile The Lost Territory Tzvetan Stoyanov Mentors and a Doctorate Philippe Sollers Tel Quel Resurrections Sit Down! Sit Down! Dominique Rolin Multiverses Beneath the Paving Stones Semiotike (1969) Language, the Unknown (1969) Emile Benveniste The Text of the Novel (1970) Ilse Barande Revolution in Poetic Language (1974) The Pedagogical Imperative The Desire for China About Chinese Women (1974) The Intimate Acts of the Modern Personality David Compartmentalizing Reliance: An Ethic of Care The Crossing of Signs (1975) New York City The Dissident Polylogue (1977) Crazy Truth (1979) Part III Becoming Julia Kristeva (1980-TODAY) A Vertical Present Yes, Yes, of Course, But What Shall We Do Now? Death, That Strange Voice . . . 1 The 1980s: Strangers to Ourselves and Others Ca continue: Work, Family, the Ile de Re Whatever Happens to Me, That's What I Write About Questions of Civilization Cannot Be Managed by Politics Powers of Horror (1980) Tales of Love (1983) In the Beginning Was Love (1985) Black Sun (1987) Strangers to Ourselves (1988) And Yet, It's up to Women . . . If You Could Just Die . . . 2 The 1990s: Revolt, She Said Accolades and Accusations New Directions: Fiction and Revolt Thinking Through the Novel The Samurai (1990) The Old Man and the Wolves (1991) Possessions (1996) Time and Sense (1994) Revolt After the Revolution New Maladies of the Soul (1993) The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt (1996) Intimate Revolt (1997) The Future of Revolt (1998) Nations Without Nationalism (1990) Revolt, She Said (1998) The Severed Head (1998) Transcend yourself! The Feminine and the Sacred (1998) Hannah Arendt (1999) I Cannot See Any Light . . . 3 The 2000s: An Intellectual Who Works on the Invisible Against Cynicism I Can Only Rely On My Own Strengths Psychoanalysis Is a Humanism Singular Universalism and Human Rights Crisis of the Subject (2000) At the Risk of Thought (2001) Micropolitic (2001) Chronicles of a Sensitive Time (2003) Open Letter to the President (2003) Their Look Pierces Our Shadows (2011) Murder in Byzantium (2004) Hatred and Forgiveness (2005) Alone, a Woman (2007) Melanie Klein (2000) Colette (2002) Teresa, My Love (2008) This Incredible Need to Believe (2007) Reinventing Secular Humanism The French Death of God Theologian The Crisis of Ideality Teresa, Our Contemporary Representing the Atheists of the World 4 The 2010s: Traveling Through Myself No One Owns the Truth The Why Rather than the How No One Pays Attention to the Political Until It Feels Spiritual Perpetual Motion Beauvoir Presents/In the Present (2016) Passions of Our Time (2013) The Enchanted Clock (2015) It's a True Nightmare or a Pitiful Farce, I'm Not Sure Which . . . Who's Afraid of Julia Kristeva? A Violence That Reaches the Heart It's Just Not My Life Appendix 1: Document #10 of the Sabina File Appendix 2: A Chronological List of Kristeva's Books in French Notes Index

Reviews

Alice Jardine's intellectual biography of Julia Kristeva is breathtaking. Exploring the relationship between Kristeva's life and her writings, Jardine reflects not only on the powerful influences on Kristeva's thinking and the importance of Kristeva's work for contemporary culture, but also on what it means to write a biography. Beautifully written and full of insight, Jardine's biography is a must read for anyone interested in French Theory and Kristeva's definitive role in its development. * Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, USA * People, cities, vibrant seminar rooms, intellectual and amorous encounters: following the thread of Kristeva's books, Alice Jardine takes us on a journey across shifting social and political landscapes in her passionate biographical account of one of the most important thinkers of our epoch. * Miglena Nikolchina, Professor of Literary Theory, University of Sofia, Bulgaria *

Alice Jardine's intellectual biography of Julia Kristeva is breathtaking. Exploring the relationship between Kristeva's life and her writings, Jardine reflects not only on the powerful influences on Kristeva's thinking and the importance of Kristeva's work for contemporary culture, but also on what it means to write a biography. Beautifully written and full of insight, Jardine's biography is a must read for anyone interested in French Theory and Kristeva's definitive role in its development. * Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, USA * People, cities, vibrant seminar rooms, intellectual and amorous encounters: following the thread of Kristeva's books Alice Jardine takes us on a journey across shifting social and political landscapes in her passionate biographical account of one of the most important thinkers of our epoch. * Miglena Nikolchina, Professor of Literary Theory, University of Sofia, Bulgaria *

An authoritative voice narrates Kristeva's life: Alice Jardine knows her subject extremely well, perhaps better than anyone writing in English. She was Kristeva's research assistant as a graduate student at Columbia in 1976 when Kristeva first went to teach there; she has conducted many interviews over a period of years and even visited Bulgaria with her. She calls her subject 'an important personal friend.' And I call this an important book ... What I admire most about At the Risk of Thinking is the author's finely nuanced, perfectly clear analyses of Kristeva's theories, concepts, and positions. * L'Esprit Createur * Alice Jardine's intellectual biography of Julia Kristeva is breathtaking. Exploring the relationship between Kristeva's life and her writings, Jardine reflects not only on the powerful influences on Kristeva's thinking and the importance of Kristeva's work for contemporary culture, but also on what it means to write a biography. Beautifully written and full of insight, Jardine's biography is a must read for anyone interested in French Theory and Kristeva's definitive role in its development. * Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, USA * People, cities, vibrant seminar rooms, intellectual and amorous encounters: following the thread of Kristeva's books, Alice Jardine takes us on a journey across shifting social and political landscapes in her passionate biographical account of one of the most important thinkers of our epoch. * Miglena Nikolchina, Professor of Literary Theory, University of Sofia, Bulgaria * With a light and magical touch, Alice Jardine narrates the story of Julia Kristeva's journey from the Black Sea to the Atlantic to the expanse of human singularity. In her intimate account, Jardine shows how Kristeva became one of the most extraordinary intellectuals of our era. Scholars will be delighted with new biographical nuggets, such as why it was that Lacan didn't make it to that trip to China. But more, for every reader, here is is a story that will inspire us all to think more deeply, to revolt against preconceptions, and--instead of being shaped by the Big Other--to become our own force in creating the meaning of our lives. * Noelle McAfee, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Psychoanalytic Studies Program, Emory University, USA *

Alice Jardine's intellectual biography of Julia Kristeva is breathtaking. Exploring the relationship between Kristeva's life and her writings, Jardine reflects not only on the powerful influences on Kristeva's thinking and the importance of Kristeva's work for contemporary culture, but also on what it means to write a biography. Beautifully written and full of insight, Jardine's biography is a must read for anyone interested in French Theory and Kristeva's definitive role in its development. * Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, USA *

Author Information

Alice Jardine is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, USA. Her publications include Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (1985), Living Attention: On Teresa Brennan (2007), and, as translator, Julia Kristeva's Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (ed. Leon Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine and Leon Roudiez, 1980).

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