“The questioning of any and all entities, including belief and its objects, is one of Christianity's most impressive legacies; and humanism, its rebellious child, must not be prevented from developing this legacy [ «et l’humanisme, son enfant rebelle, ne saurait être empêché de développer ce legs. » ].” FaithHumanism Book:This Incredible Need to Believe Source: This Incredible Need to Believe
“Can the beautiful be sad? Is beauty inseparable from the ephemeral and hence from mourning? Or else is the beautiful object the one that tirelessly returns following destructions and wars in order to bear witness that there is survival after death, that immortality is possible?” BeautyImmortalityMelancholia Book:Black Sun Source: Black Sun
“During that course in which "I" become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit.” IdentityAbjection Book:Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection Source: Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection
“Do not all attempts, in our own cultural sphere at least, at escaping from the Judeo-Christian compound by means of a unilateral call to return to what it has repressed (rhythm, drive, the feminine, etc.), converge on the same Celinian anti-Semitic fantasy? And this is so because, as I have tried to explain earlier the writings of the chosen people have selected a place, in the most determined manner, on that untenable crest of manness seen as symbolic fact—which constitutes abjection.” SexismAnti SemitismMonotheismAbjection Book:Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection Source: Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection
“Pregnancy = "the slow, difficult, and delightful apprenticeship in attentiveness, gentleness, forgetting oneself. The ability to succeed in this path without masochism and without annihilating one's affective, intellectual, and professional personality - such would seem to be the stakes to be won through guiltless maternity.” FeminismPregnancyMaternityWomen T Time Author:Julia Kristeva
“[Single or lesbian motherhood] can be seen as [one] of the most violent forms taken by the rejection of the symbolic ... as well as one of the most fervent divinizations of maternal power - all of which cannot help but trouble an entire moral and legal order without, however, proposing an alternative to it” FamilyQueerLesbianSingle MotherhoodMaggie NelsonThe ArgonautsJulia KristevaLesbian Motherhood Author:Julia Kristeva
“The depressed narcissist mourns not an Object but the Thing. Let me posit the "Thing" as the real that does not lend itself to signification, the center of attraction and repulsion, seat of the sexuality from which the object of desire will become separated... the Thing is an imagined sun, bright and black at the same time.” LoveDepressionAttachmentNarcissismIdealization Book:Black Sun Source: Black Sun
“We found so much to say, to share, to learn.... For it wasn't just the Marquis de Sade profile and the sporty thighs-and-calves that seduced me. It was even more, perhaps, or certainly just as much, the speed at which you used to read, and still do.” LoveWritingFeministJulia KristevaKristeva Author:Julia Kristeva
“Naming suffering, exalting it, dissecting it into its smallest components – that is doubtless a way to curb mourning.” WaySufferingMourningSmallestComponentsCurbDissecting Author:Julia Kristeva
“When the starry sky, a vista of open seas, or a stained-glass window shedding purple beams fascinate me, there is a cluster of meaning, of colors, of words, of caresses, there are light touches, scents, sighs, cadences that arise, shroud me, carry me away, and sweep me beyond the things I see, hear, or think, The "sublime" object dissolves in the raptures of a bottomless memory. It is such a memory, which, from stopping point to stopping point, remembrance to remembrance, love to love, transfers that object to the refulgent point of the dazzlement in which I stray in order to be.” ThinkingLightOrderMemoriesSeaSkyObjectsColorWindowGlassesAriseScentSublimeRemembranceStoppingSighPurpleTransfersBeamRaptureCaressVistasCadenceClustersShroudsStained GlassStarry SkyStained Glass Windows Author:Julia Kristeva
“Today’s milestone is human madness. Politics is a part of it, particularly in its lethal outbursts. Politics is not, as it was for Hannah Arendt, the field where human freedom is unfurled. The modern world, the world of world war, the Third World, the underground world of death that acts upon us, do not have the civilized splendor of the Greek city state. The modern political domain is massively, in totalitarian fashion, social, leveling, exhausting. Hence madness is a space of antisocial, apolitical, and paradoxically free individuation” WorldHumansWarStatesTodayPoliticalSocialSpaceCitiesModernFashionFieldsThirdsMadnessGreekWar Of The WorldsCivilizedDomainModern WorldExhaustingSplendorThird WorldHuman FreedomMilestoneAntisocialIndividuationOutburstApolitical Author:Julia Kristeva
“That faith be analyzable does not necessarily imply a method for getting by without it. . . .” DoeMethod Author:Julia Kristeva
“The depressed person is a radical, sullen atheist.” PersonsAtheistRadicalSullenDepressed Person Author:Julia Kristeva
“Abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it --- on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.” DoeCuttingSubjectsDangerContraryAcknowledgePerpetualAmbiguityAbjection Author:Julia Kristeva
“Significance is inherent in the human body.” HumansBodyPhotographySignificanceInherentHuman Body Author:Julia Kristeva
“Love is the time and space where "I" give myself the right to be extraordinary.” GivingSpaceLove IsExtraordinaryDreamerTime And Space Author:Julia Kristeva