Overview

"In this wide-ranging and accessible introduction, internationally known linguist, psychoanalyst, and theorist Julia Kristeva presents the evolution and emergence of linguistics as human science. She traces postmodern linguistic theory back to its roots, using sources that range from Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan and Phoenician writings, and the Hebrew Bible to the Prague School of Structuralism. Thorough and far-reaching in its analysis, Language: The Unknown provides fascinating insights into the history of graphic cultures, philosophy, anthropology, and semiotics. For Kristeva, the object of linguistic investigation is not ""What is language?"" but rather ""How can language be thought?"" In a series of carefully documented analyses informed by the theories of Levi-Strauss, Saussure, Benveniste, Freud, and Lacan, Kristeva describes the history of thought as a phenomenon that links philosophical speculation to linguistic practice."

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9780231216791

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[Kristeva's] graceful and lucid history of language ranges over vast intellectual territory—Egyptian hieroglyphs to psychoanalytic discourse, Crates of Mallos to Benveniste to Lévi-Strauss and Lacan. Guaranteed jargon-free. * Voice Literary Supplement * It is a pleasure to read a study that maintains a sophisticated theoretical stance with such clarity, care, and intellectual brilliance. -- Lawrence Kritzman

Author Information

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”

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