Borders of Language. Kristeva's Critique of Lacan (Shuli Barzilai)

Borders of Language: Kristeva's Critique of Lacan
Author(s): Shuli Barzilai

Source: PMLA, Vol. 106, No. 2 (Mar., 1991), pp. 294-305
Published by: Modern Language Association
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Shuli Barzilai
Borders of Language:
Kristeva's Critique of Lacan
N "WITHIN THE MICROCOSM of 'The Talking Cure,"' an
SHULI BARZILAI is senior
essay collected in the volume Interpreting Lacan, Julia Kristeva

presents "her own reading of Jacques Lacan's texts and practice." In
lecturer in English at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
spite of-or perhaps in keeping with-her opening promise to examine "Lacan's contributions" (33), Kristeva proceeds to mount a radi-
She has published essays on
literary theory, psychoanalytic
cal critique of the Lacanian project (the linguistic interpretation of the

criticism, and contemporary
unconscious) and to display the contingencies that limit his voyage of
discovery (the return to Freud).

women's fiction in Diacritics,
the Journal of Narrative Tech-
nique, New Literary History,
Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, Signs, South-
ern Humanities Review, Style,

Yale French Studies, and other
journals. This essay is part of

a work in progress on Lacan as
a literary and cultural critic.
Lacan's (in)version of the Saussurian sign is summarily stated in his

well-known "algorithm" S/s: "the signifier over the signified, 'over'
corresponding to the bar separating the two stages" ("Agency" 149).
Throughout her theoretical writings, Kristeva calls into question the
relevance of this formula to certain signifying practices, even when she
is not overtly concerned with Lacanian psychoanalysis. In particular,
she argues that the algorithm inadequately accounts for nondiscursive pathological and creative phenomena, for an experiential dimension (whether lived or, say, literary) that eludes the language function.
As she suggests in "Within the Microcosm," the task of the analystand of the critic-reader-is to be attentive to "noises," to try to hear
not only through the differentfigures or spaces made by those signs which
resemble linguistic signs, but also through other elements . . . which, although always already caught in the web of meaning and signification, are
not caught in the same way as the two-sided units of the Saussurean sign
and even less so in the manner of linguistico-logical categories. (37)
In this text and others, Kristeva proposes the concept of the "semiotic"
in order to designate those other elements and to facilitate study of
them. She would shift psychoanalysis away from its fascination with
language and toward operations that are "pre-meaning and pre-sign
(or trans-meaning, trans-sign)" ("System" 29), that cut "through lan-
guage, in the direction of the unspeakable" (Tales 29).
294
Shuli Barzilai
295
borderline is where the sovereignty of the sign is

threatened and where something wild, something
to redress what Kristeva views as Lacan's overemirreducible to language, emerges. Nevertheless, it
phasis, in his teaching and practice, on the sym- should be noted that this is a border, not a beyond,
bolic order. She focuses on a specific clinical of language. The dissolution of the sign is, Kristeva
instance: the analytic encounter with "borderline" stresses, only "relative," and a "semblance of sopatients. To demonstrate the limitations of a the- cialization" is sometimes maintained (42-43).
Second, borderline discourse is an effect or
ory by means of a limited example might itself
Within this larger, ongoing project, the essay on
the "talking cure" presents a concentrated effort
seem a questionable critical procedure. In what outbreak of what Kristeva calls "abjection."
follows I try to show that Kristeva's critique of theDescribed briefly and oversimply, abjection entails
Lacanian formula, in relation to the borderline pa- an absence (the normative condition of the pre-
tient's discourse, has wide-ranging implicationsmirror-stage infans) or a collapse (the condition

for other forms of communication as well. Fur-
of the borderline patient) of the boundaries that

thermore, because Lacan offers his algorithm as structure the subject. In the opening pages of
the elementary structure of all language and of all
Powers of Horror, Kristeva repeatedly posits a
unconscious processes, Kristeva's essay, in effect,connection between abjection and the border. She
defines abjection as "what disturbs identity, syschallenges the ability of his theory to sustain the
Freudian insight.
tem, order. What does not respect borders, posi-
tions, rules" (4) and explains that "abjection is

above all ambiguity" (9). This ambiguity develops
under the impact of "ruptures" or in the collapse
Borderline, in the clinical sense of the term,
of self-limits. The abject is neither subject nor obusually designates a "special category of cases ject, neither inside nor outside, neither here nor
. . on the fringes of madness" (Clement 55) there. In other words, the borderline patient is one
and, similarly, "patients whose problems are situ- who "strays instead of getting his bearings, desirated on the frontier between neurosis and psycho- ing, belonging, or refusing." Instead of "Who am
sis" (Moi 239). Kristeva's characterization of theI?" this patient asks, " Where am I?" (8). The "borborderline reflects her twofold theoretical orienderlander" is always an exile; "'I' is expelled," or
ceases to be, for, "How can I be without border?"
tation as a linguist and a psychoanalyst.
First, a distinctive symptom of the borderline This absence of identity-a psychic wandering or
condition is the appearance of "bits of discursive loss of place-is congruent with a discourse
chaos" ("Within the Microcosm" 45); the lan- produced on the borders of language: "what is abguage function disintegrates: "the patient's 'bor- ject . .. draws me toward the place where meanderline' discourse gives the analyst the impression ing collapses" (2).
of something alogical, unstitched, and chaotic- For Kristeva, then, the borderline has a complex
despite its occasionally obsessive appearances- resonance. It designates a condition that eludes
which is almost impossible to memorize" (42). both the mirror stage essential for subject formaThese "bits" appear at the limits of the symbolic tion and the castration anxiety that (by placing the
order, "outside the transcendental enclosure
maternal object under prohibition) generates
within which we are otherwise constrained by phe-desire, leaving a "strayed subject . . . huddled
nomenology and its relative, linguistics" (40-41). outside the paths of desire." The borderline
Eluding the inside of the language system, borderalso denotes a corollary effect: "a language that
line discourse refuses ordered and regulatinggives up" (11).

articulations. It does not cause the patient to
transgress the law of language and logic or to fore-
II
close the symbolic concept that Lacan designates

the "name-of-the-father" (nom-du-pere); rather, Now if, as already noted, Kristeva's critique apsymptomatically, it allows such transgression and
plies only to an exception, only to an interesting
foreclosure to go into effect. Topographically, thebut restricted deviation, it would not seriously
296
endanger the Lacanian rule. However, as the word

"microcosm" in the title of her essay immediately
sign. It is to fail to account for areas of aesthetic

and, in particular, literary creation situated beyond
suggests, this "special" case is an epitome of the

speaking subject at large; instead of regarding the
borderline as a pathological entity, Kristeva sees
signification and meaning (beyond the symbolic).

As Kristeva observes in an earlier revisionist essay,
in it a pervasive aspect of the human condition.
alone" ("Word" 69). The rhythms and musicality

of a literary work, like the colors of a painting,
Border effects are to be found in the discourse of
"[A] text cannot be grasped through linguistics
everyday life: "The problem of the heterogeneous

in meaning, of the unsymbolizable, the unsignifi-
may inscribe "instinctual 'residues' that the under-
speaking being, who is not only split but split into
cesses ("The unconscious is structured like a lan-
an irreconcilable heterogeneity" ("Within the

Microcosm" 35-36).
Nor is that all. The term "heterogeneity"
elements of experience.
standing subject has not symbolized" ("Giotto's

able, which we confront in the analysand's dis- Joy" 221). In brief, Kristeva argues that Lacan's
course . .. characterizes the very condition of the linguistic conceptualization of unconscious pro-
describes more than an effect of the split or divi-
guage") restricts access to essential and hidden
This argument may seem vulnerable at two

points. First, Lacan's concept of lalangue, in-
sion between the conscious and the unconscious
troduced rather late in his work (in the seminars

of 1972-73), seems to clear a space within the
within the speaking subject. The borders of the
symbolic system are where art, or certain types of
symbolic order for heterogeneity. Lalangue is,
Kristeva concedes, a "fundamental refinement" of
art, emerges as well. In "Within the Microcosm,"
his earlier interpretation of the relations between

these relations are briefly indicated: "The analyst's
attentiveness to language makes him open tothe unconscious and language. "As something
works of art, since it is so-called aesthetic produccompletely different from communication or dialogue," from the symbolic-which is for Lacan the
tion that knows how to deal with [saitfaire avec]
the (de)negation inherent in language, without aclocus of social exchange-lalangue is called on "to
tually knowing it" (39). This statement alludes to
represent the real from which linguistics takes its
a convergence that Kristeva elaborates elsewhere.
object" ("Within the Microcosm" 34). Kristeva
She defines poetic language, like borderline discites Lacan: "Language is what we try to know
course, as "a practice for which any particular
about the functioning of lalangue" (Encore 126;
language is the margin" ("Ethics" 25) and, conqtd. on 34). However, even though lalangue seems
sequently, as eluding a strictly linguistic interto be "animated by affects that involve the prespretation: "the very concept of sign, whichence of nonknowledge" and therefore seems
presupposes a vertical (hierarchical) division be"irreducible-to-signifiance," it remains a funtween signifier and signified, cannot be applied to
damentally "thetic" concept: "it exists and can be
poetic language-by definition an infinity of pairconceived only through the position, the thesis, of
ings and combinations" ("Word" 69). At times, she
language." On what grounds other than her vested
interest does Kristeva make this claim? "No matmakes the connection even more explicit-"poetic
language . . . by its very economy borders on
ter how impossible the real might be, once it is
psychosis" ("From One Identity" 125)-and, at

made homogeneous with lalangue, it finally beother times, more general: "all literature is probcomes part of a topology with the imaginary and
ably a version of the apocalypse that seems to me
the symbolic, a part of that trinary hold from
rooted . . . on the fragile border (borderlinewhich nothing escapes" (35-36). By assimilating

cases) where identities . . . do not exist or only
lalangue to the realm of the real, Lacan makes the
barely so-double, fuzzy, heterogeneous, animal,
concept fully coherent with the interrelated orders
metamorphosed, altered, abject" (Powers 207).
(symbolic-imaginary-real) central to his thought.
To insist on the primacy of language is, thereLalangue, too, becomes a part of that triadic
structure.
fore, to fail to account for preverbal and nonverbal elements that escape the safety net of language,Kristeva's argument could be undercut (but also
that cannot be subsumed under the Saussurian
reinforced) from a second point of view. Her com-
Shuli Barzilai
297
tinuous cortical area," "centers" seen as thresholds,

etc.) as well as language acquisition and communication (the after-word, the relation to the Other).
(37n8)
plaint is not the first, nor is it likely to be the last,
directed at Lacan. As she readily acknowledges:

"Critiques of Lacanian theory have included a
number of attempts to give status to affect and to
the heterogeneity it introduces into the discursive
order" (34). What, then, does Kristeva's critique This note constitutes an essay within the essay,
add to our understanding of this theory and its or a kind of subplot in Kristeva's text. In seclimitations? I would suggest that the force and in- tions 3-5 of my discussion, I closely study this
novation of her reading derive from its specific reference to "Freud's notion of a 'sign"' and exdirection or recourse: the path it takes back to the amine its immediate intertextual relations, and in
writings of Freud.
section 61 assess the wider implications of the note
for her challenge to Lacan's theory and practice.
III
By "intertextual relations," I mean both the inner
play of elements that organizes Kristeva's argument, "the web of relationships which produce the
A dense footnote, half a page long, gives the first
structure of the text (or the subject)," and the outer
indication of the direction Kristeva's reading will
play, "the web of relationships linking the text
take. It presents new and significant (not marginal)
(subject) with other discourses" (Zepp 92-93; see

material in support of her critical interpretation.
also Kristeva, Revolution 59-60).
The note's position is therefore somewhat at odds
with its content. What appears as a detour from The terms "complexity" and "closure" in
the main path unpredictably turns into a crucialKristeva's opening exhortation function in a manner analogous to "heterogeneity" and "homogestep in a series of steps:
neity." These sets of terms also suggest yet another
distinction central to her work. Le semiotique, in
We should keep in mind the incredible complexity of
Kristeva's sense, differs from la semiotique, which
Freud's notion of a "sign," which is exorbitant com-
is semiotics as a general, traditional science of

pared with the closure imposed on the sign by Saussure's stoicism. The Freudian "sign" is outlined in On
signs. Her semiotic is a drive-affected dimension
Aphasia: visual, tactile, and acoustic images linked

of human experience that disrupts (even as it interto object associations which refer, principally through
fuses
with) the symbolic: "a disposition that is
an auditory connection, to the word itself, composeddefinitely heterogeneous to meaning but always in
of an acoustic and kinesthetic image, of reading and
sight of it" ("From One Identity" 133). This con-
writing. The fact that the acoustic image is privileged
ception of le se'miotique may be postulated as a
in this case does not diminish the heterogeneity of this
mediation between the real, which is the beyond

"psychological blueprint of word-presentations,"
or other of language, and the symbolic, between
which today we still have difficulty assimilating, even
what
is ineffable and what is articulated through
with the rigor of linguistics and analytical attentivelanguage. According to Kristeva's formulations, it
ness. And yet, the nature of this "imagery" will reis a process rather than a system: "meaning not as
main incomprehensible unless we perceive it as always
already indebted (in a more or less "primary" or "seca sign-system but as a signifying process" ("Sysondary" way, as he would later say) to that representtem" 28); it involves dynamic, prelinguistic operability specific to language, and therefore to the
ations rather than thetic or static modes of
linguistic sign (signifier/signified). While this sign
articulation, which are the domain of what she
serves as the internal limit upon which Freud struc-
calls" 'classical' semiotics" (32). Le semiotique is
tures his notions of presentation and cleavage (what

also characterized by states of archaic mentation,
Lacan makes explicit in his "linghysteria"), it is by no
closely linked to infantile symbiosis. Thus, for
means the most far-reaching of Freud's discoveries.
Kristeva
the semiotic encompasses two distinct but
Freud's conception of the unconscious derives from
related
areas
of interest: (1) the "semanalysis" or
a notion of language as both heterogeneous and spasemiology of signifying practices-that is, of lintial, outlined first in On Aphasia when he sketches
guistic phenomena-and of "pre- and transout as a "topology" both the physiological underpinnings of speech ("the territory of language," "a conlogical breakouts" ("Ethics" 27); (2) in contrast to
298
thetic consciousness, a condition of instinctual
cosm" 33). But, as Freud's founding gesture of
motility that corresponds to the position of the in-
autoanalysis demonstrates, it is difficult, if not im-
fans before the mirror stage permits the elabora-
possible, to have a theory without the libidinal
tion of an ego and, no less crucially, before the fear
positioning of the theorist. The odd marginal moment, the emergence of the footnote within her
texts, enacts what Kristeva describes: the disrup-
of castration produces a superego submissive to

the interdiction imposed by the father.
Strategically, then, Kristeva enlists the "complexity" of Freud's model of the sign in order to
counter the "closure" and hegemony of the Saussurian model privileged by Lacan. She appeals to
authority in order to repeal authority. The invocation of Freud's sign will enable her to arrive at
the limits (that is to say, the limitations as well as
the borders) of the symbolic system and thus to
identify operations irreducible to the S/s relation.
But why is this sign itself deported to a border?
Any attempt to examine the implications of this
gesture requires tracing the footnote's progress.
For it is a question not only of displacement but
also of repetition. Where exactly does the footnote
first appear? And where does it go from there?
Note 8 is introduced, in the first part of "Within
the Microcosm," at the end of a sentence that
tive relation of borderline phenomena to the sym-
bolic system. This moment could also be said to

resemble the interplay between the unconscious
and the conscious. I examine the footnote, therefore, in the theoretical context of her critique and
subsequently in relation to an anxiety that enables
and accompanies the critique's textual reproduction. Such a reading itself cannot avoid repetition,
if only because it brings, conceptually and typographically, a border (a footnote) to the center of
discussion. My interpretation is constrained to

duplicate as well as to analyze Kristeva's text. In
other words, I cannot step outside (again it is a

question of footwork) the circuit of readings I am
trying to read.
IV
posits "places ofjouissance (when it undermines

the signifier/signified distinction and predicative Freud's interest in a psychical, as well as phys-
synthesis) and of defense (when [jouissance] be- iological, explanation for articulatory disturcomes blocked)" (37). By a kind of associative
bances is already evident in his monograph
transposition, the reader is then directed to "the On Aphasia (1891). In describing the "speech
other scene"-literally, to a block of small type at apparatus," Freud posits a relation between
the bottom of the page. The material presented in "word-presentation" and "object-presentation."
this block reappears a few pages later, within the Later, in the 1915 paper "The Unconscious," the
principal text; that is, in the second part of her es- same terms enter into different combinations:
say, Kristeva raises the footnote out of the bottom "word-presentation" is retained, but what was
margin and integrates it into the main line of her called "object-presentation" becomes "thing-
argument. (This movement might recall the "up-
presentation." In "The Unconscious," as the edi-
ward mobility" of Hamlet after his original appearance in a note in the first edition of The
Interpretation of Dreams.) Kristeva's footwork
now becomes increasingly intricate. Her note on
tor of The Standard Edition points out, "object-
presentation" denotes "a complex made up of

the combined 'thing-presentation' and 'wordpresentation'-a complex which has no name
the Freudian sign not only moves from the borders given to it" in On Aphasia ("Appendix C" 209).
to the body of the essay on Lacan. It also turns up This complex, however, is named in Kristeva's
a third time, in "Something to Be Scared Of," the footnote and its reiterations. Kristeva calls it
second chapter of Powers of Horror.

This repetition undoubtedly indicates the
theoretical importance of Freud's sign for the crit-
Freud's "sign," usually indicating her application

by means of italics or quotation marks.
Now, to use "sign" for that which Freud refers
ical evaluation of Lacan's contributions. Perhaps to in On Aphasia as "the functional unit of

speech" and "a complex concept" seems to
underscore the similarity between Freud's and
volume Interpreting Lacan ("Within the Micro- Saussure's linguistic formulations (73; see also
it is also a trace of the essay's origins in two pieces

that were stitched together for the first time in the
Shuli Barzilai
"Appendix C" 210 for an alternative translation).

Such a designation suggests not only that Freud's
"functional unit of speech" adumbrates Saussure's
but, more crucial for Lacan's linguistic emphasis,
that Freud's conception does not fundamentally

differ from the signified-signifier distinction set
forth in the Course in General Linguistics (1915).
If so, the monograph provides strong grounds for
a defense (rather than a critique) of Lacan's

assimilation of the Saussurian schema into his
theory.
299
just as he does in the 1891 monograph. Nevertheless, Kristeva contends, "[t]he fact that the acoustic
image is privileged in this case does not diminish
the heterogeneity of this 'psychological blueprint
of word-presentations,' which today we still have
difficulty assimilating"-and which Lacan apparently never did.
It should be stressed, however, that Kristeva
neither slights nor denies the importance of the
Saussurian-Lacanian distinction for linguistics

and for psychoanalysis. In the footnote and its
Kristeva expressly notes these grounds in the

second chapter of Powers of Horror: "Obviously
privileged here [in On Aphasia], the sound image
of word presentation and the visual image of object presentation become linked, calling to mind
very precisely the matrix of the sign belonging to
specific to language, and therefore to the linguistic sign (signifier/signified)" ("Within the Microcosm" 37); "one can say nothing of such (effective
philosophical tradition and to which Saussurian

semiology gave new currency." This recalling,
homologous with the linguistic signifier" (Powers
permutations, she repeatedly gives credit where it

is due. The Freudian sign, she says, is "always al-
ready indebted . . . to that representability
or semiotic) heterogeneity without making it
however, emphasizes certain elements in Freud's
51); "one should not forget the advantages that
definitional statements while repressing or neglect-
Kristeva, is the difference between the two signs-
centering the heterogeneous Freudian sign in the

Saussurian one afforded" (52). Yet she also closely
and frequently remarks the disadvantages. The assimilation of Freud's sign to Saussure's leaves out
"what constitutes all the originality of the Freud-
Freud's and Saussure's?
ian 'semiology' and guarantee[s] its hold on the
ing others: "it is easy to forget the other elements

belonging to the sets thus tied together" (51). What
are these "other elements"? Or what, according to
For a reply it is necessary to return, as Kristeva

heterogeneous economy (body and discourse) of
indicates, to the monograph on aphasia, in which
the speaking being" (51-52). Lacanian theory, in
Freud defines his "complex concept" (Kristeva's

emphatically insisting on the "unitary bent" of the
"sign") as "constituted of auditory, visual and
sign, neglects Freud's notions of "a complicated
kinaesthetic elements" (73; see also "Appendix C"
concept built up from various impressions"
210). Freud expands this concept-the word "cor-(Aphasia 77): "when Lacan posits the Name of the
responds to an intricate process of associations
Father as the keystone to all sign, meaning, and
entered into by elements of visual, acoustic anddiscourse, he points to the necessary condition of
kinaesthetic origins"-and then repeats it: "The
one and only one process of the signifying unit,
idea, or concept, of the object is itself another

albeit a constitutive one" (Powers 53).
complex of associations composed of the most
varied visual, auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic andBefore discussing other implications of Kris-
other impressions" (77-78; see also "Appendix C"teva's critical position, I would like to recapitulate
213). This is indeed a complex object-presentation.
the argument already presented. In his much
In addition to linking visual and acoustic compovaunted "return to Freud," Lacan does not go far
nents, it allows nonverbal elements of expression
enough, either theoretically or chronologically.
to be integrated into the "[p]sychological schema
Despite the considerable explanatory power of his
of the word concept" (77). For this reason, Kristeva
theory, Lacan does not take in or allow for the full
asserts in her footnote that Freud's notions of
complexity of Freud's insights. Hence Kristeva empresentation are among "the most far-reaching"
of his discoveries. Certainly Freud, like Saussure
(as Jacques Derrida shows in Of Grammatology),
privileges the sound image in his later writings,
phasizes the need to "rehabilitate this Freudian

sign; the study of language-in linguistics or in
psychoanalysis-can no longer do without it"
("Within the Microcosm" 42). Hence she cautions
300
those who would apply Lacanian formulations indiscriminately that "a reductiveness of this sort
laughter and tears, moments of acting out"
("Within the Microcosm" 38). Yet the semiotic appears not only within and through infantile or
covery" (Powers 52). In Kristeva's view, a funny divergent modes of expression: "Beneath the
thing happened to Lacan on his way back to seemingly well-constructed grammatical aspects
Freud. He murdered his father, perhaps without of these patients' discourse we find a futility, an
knowing it.
emptying of all affect from meaning-indeed,
even an empty signifier" (41).
V
But if borderline discourse and, by extension,
certain types of poetic language are full of the
A further understanding of the drama that unfolds
symptom called the "pure" or "empty" signifier,
here requires transposing a different kind of cashow can the analyst (who is inevitably caught up
tration onto the one just mentioned. This transin the symbolic) respond to such a discourse? How
position will lead to the "maternal" mode of
can the "talking cure" or any interpretation take
reading recommended and practiced by Kristeva
place when the bottom has dropped out of the
as a supplement-in the Derridean sense of addisign? What kind of analytic technique is called
for?
tion and substitution-to the "paternal" mode
that marks Lacan's access to the unconscious.
In "Within the Microcosm," Kristeva offers a
In the treatment of borderline patients, Kristeva
primarily theoretical account of her work in this
remarks, the analyst often encounters "a language
area. (She includes more extensive clinical examthat gives up." This implies that something
plesisin Tales of Love, published in 1983, the same
surrendered or, more precisely, sundered at the
year that Interpreting Lacan appeared.) The title
amounts to a true castration of the Freudian dis-
borders of language. The signifier is cut off from

of the second part of the essay-"Two Types of Inthe signified; the material specificity of the terpretation
sign
in the Cure of a Borderline Patient:
remains, without any signification and affect.

Construction and Condensation"-points to her
Thus the border is a cutting edge, a place of scisanalytic approach. Although Kristeva does not exsion: "It is, in short, a reduction of discourse plicitly
to
make the connection, the two types may
the state of 'pure' signifier, which insuresbethe

considered as correlative to the signs previously
disconnection between verbal signs" (Powers 49).
contrasted in her essay. The constructive type asThe fundamental signifier, the "name-of-thesumes the Saussurian-Lacanian distinction; the
father," is repudiated, and fragmented, nonverbal
condensed type draws on the interplay of "other
elements or "pure" signifiers prevail. Language
elements." These methods of interpretation do not
exclude
(the patient's or the text's) "keeps breaking up
to each other, however. Condensation serves
the point of desemantization, to the point of reverin one of two supplementary capacities: as an opberating only as notes, music, 'pure signifier'";
tional accessory or a required substitute. That is,
similarly, "there is a collapse of the nexus just
conas Kristeva delineates the limitations of the
stituted by the verbal signifier effecting the simulLacanian algorithm but acknowledges its neces-
taneous Aufhebung of both signified and affect"

sity, so she suggests, in this part of her essay, the
(49-50).
need for going beyond construction without abanIn more strictly psychoanalytic terms, there
is
doning
it. In the exposition that follows, I do not
a foreclosure (Verwerfung) of the paternal funcattempt to evaluate the clinical aspects of contion and a regression to a premirror stage in which
struction and condensation. Rather, as a reader
the individual forms a fusional dyad with what
is in literary criticism, I explore some interesttrained
no longer perceived as an alterity, as an (m)other.
ing analogies between these techniques and the
In such regressive states, the unstable ego tends
to of literary texts.
analysis
Construction resembles a more or less conproduce echolalia-that is, an echoing infantile
ventional but essential "thematic" criticism. As

discourse. This semiotic disposition may be heard,
according to Kristeva, "in all of these divergences
Kristeva describes it, constructive interpretation
from codified discourse, but also in gestures,

entails a "repetition or reordering . . . that builds
Shuli Barzilai
301
connections"; "it reestablishes plus and minus

signs and, subsequently, logical sequences." Be-
suffering, to enable a cure by returning meaning
cause borderline states often involve a breakdown
verse. The literary critic is, of course, under no
and signification to the patient's symbolic uni-
of the linguistic sign, the emphasis in treating them such obligation. On the contrary, the ethics of
is on the process of construction. The analyst is

a kind of contractor who builds meanings out of
disparate, "empty" elements. The task of this contractor is to repair the paternal function, "to construct relations, to take up the bits of discursive
chaos in order to indicate their relations (temporal,
causal, etc.), or even simply to repeat these bits of
discourse, thereby already ordering these chaotic
philosophical and, by extension, literary instruc-
tion, writes Derrida in "Violence and Metaphysics," is to be found in or founded on "the

discipline of the question." According to Derrida,
"[T]he question must be maintained. As a question. ... A founded dwelling, a realized tradition of the question remaining a question. If this
commandment has an ethical meaning, it is not
themes." By introducing a sequential, relational in that it belongs to the domain of the ethical, but
logic into a discourse that is marked by discon- in that it ultimately authorizes every ethical law in
tinuity and fragmentation, this type of interpre- general" (80).
tation attempts to reconstitute "the very capacities
Psychoanalysis maintains the discipline (and the
of speech to enunciate exterior referential reali- freedom) of the question by putting it in question.
ties." Reactivating the defunct S/s connection, There are times, as Kristeva shows in Tales of Love,
"constructive interpretation reestablishes signifi- when the question must be superseded, when concation and allows meaning to rediscover affect" structive interpretation or "a knowledge effect,"
(45-46).
however provisional-"this means such-and-such,
In certain respects, condensation seems analo- for the moment" (276)-is required: "To the exgous to deconstructive criticism. It calls for a free tent that the analyst not only causes truths to
"play of signifiers" (46), for puns and other ver- emerge but also tries to alleviate the pains of John
bal manipulations in the analyst's own interpre- or Juliet, he is duty bound to help them in buildtive discourse. So why not call it "deconstructive" ing their own proper space." Note that she says
or "deconstructed" interpretation, especially since "truths," however, not one truth, and uses the
such terms bring out the contrast with the con- present progressive tense, "building." Kristeva
structive type? As already indicated, construction adds:
and condensation do not constitute a diametric
opposition for Kristeva, nor does she in any way It is not a matter of filling John's "crisis"-his
enjoin us to view them as such. To assign the la- emptiness-with meaning, or of assigning a sure
bel deconstruction to the supplement of construc- place to Juliet's erotic wanderings. But to trigger a distion would perpetuate a polarization that Kristeva, course where his own "emptiness" and her own "outdeliberately and consistently, attempts to forestall. of-placeness" become essential elements, indispens-
It is a question not of choosing one and exclud- able "characters" if you will, of a work in progress.
(380)
ing the other (a logic of either/or) but, rather, of
deploying the two types (a logic of both/and). Perhaps, more complexly still, the borderline patient Yet, even if Kristeva's refusal of the term deconis better served when the analyst maintains an instruction may be understood, the question re-
terpretive stance that moves freely between the opmains: Why condensation? Kristeva borrows
Freud's term for one of the essential mechanisms
tions presented by these forms of logic.
Such a stance is itself close to, and yet not idengoverning dreamwork and joke work. She quotes
tical with, that of deconstruction. It is like deconFreud, "Condensation . .. [is] a process stretch-
struction in its moments of play and in its ing over the whole course of events till the perceptual region is reached" (Freud, Jokes 164), and
logics of interpretation. It is unlike deconstructionimmediately continues, "Thus, a condensed in-
movements between the either/or and both/and
in the ethical position the analyst takes vis-a-vis terpretation has a more erotic and more binding
the "text," in the analyst's obligation to alleviate effect" ("Within the Microcosm" 46). The connec-
302
tion between these two statements is not immedi-
Unconscious" that "man's desire is a metonymy"
ately apparent. Nevertheless, they indicate another(175). Kristeva comments in the first part of Tales
important distinction between construction and of Love, entitled "Freud and Love: Treatment and
condensation. Whereas the constructive interpre-Its Discontents":
tation would provide a signified (a meaning) for

the "empty" signifier, the condensed interpretation evokes wide-ranging, translinguistic associations. In keeping with this distinction in psychical
range and with the different roles assumed by the
analyst in each interpretive mode, I would suggest
that construction can also be characterized as
Lacan located idealization solely within the field of

the signifier and of desire; he clearly if not drastically
separated it . . . from drive heterogeneity and its archaic hold on the maternal vessel. To the contrary, by
emphasizing the metaphoricity of the identifying

idealization movement, we can attempt to restore to
the analytic bond located there (transference and

"unitary" intervention and condensation as "comcountertransference) its complex dynamic. . .. (38)
plex" participation. Condensation supplements
"logico-constructive protection" by colluding with
Kristeva's argument necessitates taking into

the borderline patient's "manic or narcissistic
account the Lacanian alignment of the mechamanipulation of the signifier" (46). The analyst
responds to non-sense with non-sense; that nisms
is, in of displacement (Verschiebung) and condensation (Verdichtung) with what Lacan calls
the analyst's play of metaphors, puns, and manip"their homologous function[s] in discourse":
ulations of words, as in the borderline patient's
and metaphor ("Agency" 160). This
discourse, "sense does not emerge out of metonymy
non-
follows Freud's definitions of displacesense, metaphorical or witty though [thealignment

nonment as "the replacing of some one particular idea
sense] might be" (Powers 50). The analyst imitates
by another in some way closely associated with it"
or borrows from the patient's rhetoric, rhythms,
and of condensation as the compression of two or
and intonations, thereby invoking heterogeneous
more elements into "a single common element"
dispositions (the semiotic), in addition to trying
339). In a state of love (such as
to reassemble linguistic signs (the symbolic). (Interpretation
In eftransference), Freud's common element correfect, the analyst echoes the echolalia of the patient.
sponds
Kristeva briefly suggests why this type of
in- to the subject's movement toward identification with or idealization of the other; in
terpretation is effective. By reinforcing archaic
metaphor, this element is the area of overlap in
modes of articulation, it activates a "maternal"
transference in which the patient directs toward the
analyst an "entire gamut of . . . desires and
which two semantic components fuse. Likewise

Kristeva's use of condensation suggests both a
mode of unconscious mental functioning and its

needs" ("Within the Microcosm" 46-47). Condensation prompts the reemergence of a presymbolic, linguistic correlative, metaphoricity. In contrast to
infantile organization and, therefore, has "a more Lacan, who emphasizes the metonymic dimension
erotic and more binding effect" in the transferen- of desire, the displacements imposed by a third
tial situation. In contrast to the unitary interven- party, the mythic father of Totem and Taboo,
Kristeva investigates-through her condensed

tion, which attempts to reestablish the paternal
function, the analyst's complex participation may interpretations-the metaphoric dimension of
be said to comply with the patient's pressure for love: the bond with (as well as separation from) the
mother.
symbiosis. This participation enables the patient
to experience a fusion or "death-in-the-mother"
VI
and, then, a second birth.
Thus condensation extends the critique of
Lacanian theory and practice. It points to the limitations of an analytic perspective that privileges
the paternal function, that stresses the advent of
the subject into the discursive world of desire. Lacan writes in "The Agency of the Letter in the
Kristeva's essay in Interpreting Lacan constitutes

only one moment, albeit a significant one, in her
effort to challenge the privileged position of the
symbolic paternal order as articulated by Lacanian
theory. Perhaps inevitably, in presenting her ac-
Shuli Barzilai
303
count of Lacan's "castration of the Freudian dis-
Significantly, Kristeva is not only contending

covery," Kristeva reduplicates her subject matter.with a symbolic, with an already "dead," father.
Her essay opens with a brief acknowledgment: Father Lacan, although legendary, was still alive
when the two parts of "Within the Microcosm"
were
initially presented. The first part appeared in
It would be strange for a psychoanalyst, asked to
the
autumn
of 1979 as "II n'y a pas de maitre a lanpresent her own reading of Jacques Lacan's texts and
gage"
'There
Is No Master of Language,' in a spepractice, to consider herself either a propagator or a
critic of his work. For the propagation of psychoanal- cial issue of Nouvelle revue depsychanalyse. The
ysis . . . has shown us, ever since Freud, that in-title could be read as a refutation of Lacan's
terpretation necessarily represents appropriation, and "truth": "II n'est parole que de langage" 'There is
thus, an act of desire and murder. (33)
Jane Gallop comments on the broader significance of this opening statement: "Outside the
immediate context, it reminds us that, psychoanalytically, interpretation is always motivated by de-
sire and aggression, by desire to have and to kill"

(27). But what does the text have that the reader
must kill-or interpret-to possess? The reader

wants what the text is supposed to know; or, as La-
no other speech but language' ("Chose" 412;

"Freudian Thing" 124). According to Kristeva, in
borderline cases (which, as I have suggested, cover
a lot of territory) the speaker is not spoken by or
subjected to language. Moreover, she argues that
attempts to assimilate psychoanalysis to linguistic models ignore the radical difference between
the two fields, "l'impermeabilite de la ratio linguistique a la decouverte freudienne" ("Il n'y a pas de
maitre" 127). Thus her title could also be under-
can might put it, the reader desires the signifier of stood to announce: Lacan is not the master of
desire, the "phallus": "signifier of power, of

potency" ("Desire" 51).
(psychoanalytic) language. The second part of her
In the first sentence of the next paragraph, how-
Hospitalier Sainte Anne in the spring of 1981. La-
essay was delivered as a seminar at the Centre
ever, Kristeva may be said to begin the essay once

again, with a modest disclaimer immediately followed by the promise of "contributions": "In the
can died on 9 September 1981.
following pages, I will first try to present one pos-
remain-the children of Freud. From this stand-
Yet, as theorists and practicing psychoanalysts,
both Kristeva and Lacan are-and will always
sible reading-my own-of Lacan's contributions point, Lacan is not the father; instead he is the selfto the interrelations between language and the appointed son and hero. Kristeva thus enters into
unconscious" (33). Yet Kristeva has already noted
that every text is an incorporation and transformation of another text. If, as she also reminds us,
a rivalry with Freud's "French son" (Kerrigan ix).

She finds that the son, who, as it were, guards the
paternal power, avails himself of it. His interpre"every hero is a patricide" (Powers 181), every critic tation is an act of self-empowerment that strips
might be one too. The role of the writer as patri- away the full originality of the Freudian insight.
cide is, of course, what Harold Bloom documents
Kristeva challenges this appropriation. A defender
in his poetics of influence. But whereas Bloom, of the father and his faith, she attempts to resurfollowing Freud's Totem and Taboo, envisages interpretive appropriation as a father-son conflict,
rect his word (the privileged signifier) after the

murderous son's incorporation of it. "It is necesas the struggle between strong male poets or critics sary," as she says, "to go back to the Freudian the-
and their paternal precursors, Kristeva clears a ory of language."

space for the daughter in this engagement.
"Go back" is a marked phrase in this context.
Kristeva enters into a conflictual relationship with At stake, for all sides, is more than how, or more
a powerful paternal authority. This daughter is not than who knows how, to read Freud well. Recastto be seduced by the father; instead, she masters ing King Lear's question, we might also ask,
and murders him. Her example invites other female descendants who formerly were spectators or
objects in the male drama of desire to join in the
Which of them shall we say does return the most?

Interpretation is an act of love and devotion, as
ritual feast.
daughter. Wherever Kristeva cites Freud's sign, she
much as of hate and slaughter, by a son or a
304
gives two elements prominence: the suggestion of

a return to origins (namely, to a very early Freudian text) and, often in conjunction with this return,
the concept of heterogeneity. For example, note 8

of "Within the Microcosm" concludes: "Freud's
Having gone thus far, it is difficult for me to ig-
nore the double bind that my presentation of

Kristeva's critique is itself caught up in. I will
briefly try to step outside-as if I could-and describe this complication.
conception of the unconscious derives from a no-In choosing to engage Kristeva's work and, partion of language as both heterogeneous and spaticularly, her essay on the "talking cure," I repeat
tial, outlined first in On Aphasia when he sketches
and applaud her criticisms of Lacanian theory as
out as a 'topology' both the physiological undertoo narrowly enclosed in its linguistic formulapinnings of speech . . . as well as language
tions. My reading of Kristeva's reading of Lacan's
acquisition and communication. . .. "This state- reading of Freud would establish a communion,
ment sums up Kristeva's critique of Lacan: it is the a sisterhood. I follow not only the movements of
"extraterritorial" or semiotic dimension of ex-
her footnote but also her return to the monograph
perience, together with the sphere of symbolic

on aphasia, thereby exhibiting an analogous aminfluence, that constitutes the Freudian uncon-bivalence: a defense of the "good" father (Freud)
scious. As Lacan himself declares, the Freudian
and a challenge to the "bad" (Lacan). But, in situconcept of the unconscious is indeed "something
ating Kristeva's texts in relation to Lacan's, I am
different" from his own (Four Fundamental

also committed to an act of appropriation. My
Concepts 21).
close reading of Kristeva's subtextual lines of deKristeva reiterates later in her essay that herfense is not entirely innocent. It implicates what
were formerly omissions at Freud's totemic fes-
return to Freud outdistances Lacan's: "In reread-
ing Freud's initial, preanalytic text on aphasiatival. It raises the specter of a conflictual engage.. we find Freud's own model of the sign andment between mothers and daughters. I have taken
not the Saussurean signifier/signified distinction"pains to defend myself and avoided any footnotes.
(42). Again, in Powers of Horror, she links herFor the fathers hover dimly, recede into the backreturn with heterogeneity: "And returning to theground, as I find myself in the coils of a transfermoment when [the Freudian theory of language] ence with a powerful maternal authority. Not
starts off from neurophysiology, one notes the sister, but daughter; both daughter and sister.
heterogeneity of the Freudian sign" (51); the Nevertheless, no longer silent onlookers at the
documentation reads: "See Freud's first book,brothers' banquet, we come up to the table. And
Aphasia (Zur Auffassung der Aphasien, 1891)"we are hungry.
(213). In the two-paragraph section of Powers of
Horror entitled "The 'Sign' according to Freud,"
the words "heterogeneity" and "heterogeneous"
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Borders of Language. Kristeva&#39;s Critique of Lacan (Shuli Barzilai)

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Borders of Language. Kristeva&#39;s Critique of Lacan (Shuli Barzilai)

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Borders of Language: Kristeva's Critique of Lacan

Author(s): Shuli Barzilai

N "WITHIN THE MICROCOSM of 'The Talking Cure,"' an

SHULI BARZILAI is senior

essay collected in the volume Interpreting Lacan, Julia Kristeva

lecturer in English at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

She has published essays on

literary theory, psychoanalytic

cal critique of the Lacanian project (the linguistic interpretation of the

discovery (the return to Freud).

nique, New Literary History,

Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, Signs, South-

ern Humanities Review, Style,

journals. This essay is part of

Lacan's (in)version of the Saussurian sign is summarily stated in his

and even less so in the manner of linguistico-logical categories. (37)

guage, in the direction of the unspeakable" (Tales 29).

borderline is where the sovereignty of the sign is

tient's discourse, has wide-ranging implicationsmirror-stage infans) or a collapse (the condition

of the borderline patient) of the boundaries that

tions, rules" (4) and explains that "abjection is

line discourse refuses ordered and regulatinggives up" (11).

close the symbolic concept that Lacan designates