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    Word, Dialogue and Novel - Julia Kristeva

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    Yuri Gomes

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    The Kristeva Reader Julia Kristeva EDITED BY TORIL MOI @ 186 hd New York Columbia University Press Word, Dialogue and Novel 35 2 ‘which were all to provide important examples ofthe practice of writing analysed . and the psyche which escape the dominant tradition of Aristotelian mono- Word, Dialogue and Novel logism, ‘Word, Dislogue and Novel’ follows Bekhtin in insisting on the ‘subversive political effects of such language, and thus also comes to prefigure ‘Kristeva’s later analysis of the politics of marginality. ‘Written in 1966, shortly after Kristeve's arrival in France, this presentation . and development of Mikhail Bakhtin’s central ideas was published in Séminiké Word, Dialogue and Novel (1969) and translated in Desire in Language (1980). With her compatriot, ‘Tevétan Todorov, Kristeva was among the frst to introduce Bakhtin’s work If the efficacy of scientific appy iat of a toa Western audience Ihave chosen to reprint the estay here both because been challenged, it is all the more striking that such a challenge should of her active dialogue with Bakhtin’s text tis ‘onan unstable borderline between traditional ‘high’ structualism with ts yearn ing to light. I have in mind that particular literary practice in which ings for ‘scientific’ objectivity (as revealed by Kristeva’s use of mathematics the elaboration of poetic meaning emerges as tangible, dynamic gram. and set theory to illustrate her points) and a remarkably early form of ‘post- Confronted with this situation, then, literary semiotics can either abstain structuralism’ or the desire to show how the pristine structuralist categories und remain silent, or persist in its efforts to elaborate a model that would always break down under the premureof the oer side of language, the be isomorphic to this other logic; that is, isomorphic to the elaboration irreverent, mocking and subversive tradition of carnival and Menippean of poetic meaning, a concern of primary importance to contemporary ‘as described by Bakhtin, In this context Kristeva’s insistence on the importance 2 semiotics, Russian Formalism, in which contemporary structural analysis claims =. to have its source, was itself faced with identical alternatives when a it it S.. a r . é Kristeva’ modernist discourse in Revolution in Poetic ‘Mikhail Bakhtin. His work represents one of that movement’s most Teneee Wocking” oes Bakinian term sich 1 ‘dialogism’ and markable accomplishments, as well as one of the most powerful ‘carnivalism’, Kristeva turns them into allusions to the kind of textual play Ss to transcend its limitation, Bakhtin shuns the linguist she was later to analyse through concepts such as ‘the semiotic’ ‘the symbolic’ rigour, wielding an impulsive and at times even prophetic pen, ‘and the ‘chora’ (see the excerpts from Revolution in this book). It is therefore takes on the fundamental problems presently confronting w 36 Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality Word, Dialogue and Novel 37 10 another structure. What allows a dynamic dimension to structuralism ._ towards an anterior or synchronic literary corpus).* is his conception of the ‘literary word!’ as an intersection of textual surfaces ‘The addressee, however, is included within a book’s discursive rather than a point (a fixed meaning), as a dialogue among several universe only as discourse itself. He thus fuses with this other discourse, writings: that of the writer, the addressee (or the character) and the this other book, in relation to which the writer has written his own text. ‘contemporary or earlier cultural context. ‘Hence horizontal axis (subject-addressee) and vertical axis (text-context) By introducing the starus of the word as a minimal structural unit, coincide, bringing to light an important fact: each word (text) is an Bekhtin situates the text within history and society, which are then seen. intersection of word (texts) where at least one other word (text) can as texts read by the writer, and into which he inserts himself by rewriting be read. In Bakhtin’s work, these two axes, which he calls dialogue and them, Diachrony is transformed into synchrony, and in ight of this trans- ambivalence, are not clearly distinguished. Yet, what appears as a lack formation, linear history appears as abstraction. The only way a writer can of rigour is in fact an insight first introduced into literary theory by participate in history is by transgressing this abstraction through a process ‘Bakhtin: any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text of reading- writing; that is, through the practice of a signifying structure the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of inter- in relation or opposition to another structure, History and morality are | textualiny’ replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic language is read ‘written and read within the infrastructure of texts. The poetic word, poly- = as at least double. valent and multi-determined, adheres to a logic exceeding that of codified The word as minimal textual unit thus turns out to occupy the status discourse and fully comes into being only in the margins of recognized of mediaor, linking structural models to cultural (historical) environ- it i at latory level of larger sequences. Confronted with this spatial conception = different Jevels. The novel in particular exteriorizes linguistic ° i inlogue. of i 8 function, These three dimensions or coordinates of dialogue are writing i, " subject, addressee and exterior texts. The words status is thus defined . Word and dialogue horizontally (the word in the text belongs to both writing subject _ Russian Formalists were engrossed with the idea of ‘linguistic dialogue’. f alogue’. and addressee) as well as vertically (the word in the text is oriented ‘They insisted on the dialogical character of linguistic communication’ Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality Word, Dialogue and Novel 39 is the only sphere possible for the life of language’. Today we can detect dialogical relationships on several levels of language: first, within the combinative dyad, langue/parole; and secondly, within the systems either of langue (as collective, monological contracts as well as systems of correlative value actualized in dialogue with the other) or of parole (as essentially ‘combinative’, not pure creation, but individual formation 7 le structures and their overlappings within the code/message relation- _. ship,!? which help to clarify Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism as inherent in language. Word, Dialogue and Novel 41 founded on the Greek (Indo-European) sentence. Such a sentence begins Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality Word, Dialogue and Novel 4B following sequence is determined by the preceding one), and dialogical (transfinite sequences that are next-larger to the preceding causal series).1* Dialogue appears most clearly in the structure of carnivalesque Janguage, where symbolic relationships and analogy take precedence the classification being then linked to a typology of discourse. Classification of words within the narrative ‘According to Bakhtin, there are three categories of words within the narrative, First, the direct word, referring back to its object, s the last Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality Word, Dialogue and Novel 45 “4 , result of a joining of two sign-systems. other; narration is structured in relation to this other. (On the strength anabialent word i theefons Oh alent words appear in Metippean of such a communication, Francis Ponge offers his own variation of ——, {1 shall return to this point), The forming of ‘T think therefore I am’: ‘I speak and you hear me, therefore we are.’ ii isan He thus postulates a shift from subjectivism to ambivalence.) Conse- himself within the narrative system; he is neither nothingness nor anybody, but the possibility of permutation from S to A, from story to discourse and from discourse to story. He becomes an anonymity, tan absence, a blank space, thus permitting the structure to exist as such. ve 18 a dialogue of two discourses. ‘The constitution of characters (of ‘personality’) also permits a junction of $ into S, (subject of enunciation) and S, (subject of “Utterance). A diagram of this mutation would appear as diagram 1. This F diagram incorporates the structure of the pronominal system! that py the very act of narrating, the subject of narration addresses an Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality Word, Dialogue and Novel 47 46 > > s a junction with the other. It is translated through the dialogical = W (zero) — he = N= sn S/S, relationship, with S, and S, filling the roles of signifier and signi- Sa fied in turns, but constituting merely a permutation of two signifiers. A Iti only through certain narrative structures that this “ N\ dialogue hold on the sign as double, this ambivalence of writing A 2 ~ is exteriorized in the actual organization of poetic discourse on the Diagram 1 level of textual literary occurrence. ; ° ject of ychoanalysts repeatedly find in the discourse of the object of PorCnoanalyss Gee diagram 2). Towards a typology of discourses ' s Bakhtin’s radical undertaking — the dynamic analysis of texts resulting a — in a redistribution of genres - calls upon us to be just as radical in he; N developing 2 typology of discourses. s, As it is used by the Formalists, the term ‘narrative’ is too ambiguous he. oe to cover all of the genres it supposedly designates. At least two different (some) one Se types of narrative can be isolated. 2 ‘We have on the one hand monological discourse, including, first, the Diagram representative mode of description and narration (the epic); secondly a a -! itionshii historical discourse; and thirdly, scientific discourse. In all three, the Ax the lee ofthe text (of the sii) = ne On ood which subject both assumes and submits to the rue of 1 (God). The dialogue > We find this ane ive. The aubject of utterance in relation to inherent in all discourse is smothered by a prohibition, a censors every nig) ‘ation, plays the role of addressee with respect to such that this discourse refuses to turn back upon itself, to enter the subject of enunciation; Plays Or ncition within the writing system dialogue with itself. To present the models of this censorship the subject it inserts the subi of rciness. Mallarmé called this __deseibe the nature ofthe differences between two types of discourse: by making the atter pass . the epic type (history and science) and the Menippean type (carnival- operation ‘elocutionary disapposrinee centative of the subject of aque writings and nove), which transgresses prohibition, Monological Tee eerie sbject of the subject of enunciation, It discourse corresponds to Jakobson’s systematic axis of language, and nuncis {ts analogous relationship to grammatical affirmation and negation has also been noted, ‘On the other hand, dialogical discourse includes carnivalesque and ‘Menippean discourses as well as the polyphonic novel. In its structures, ‘writing reads another writing, reads itself and constructs itself through 4 process of destructive genesis. personality) i constituted by this generation of a double entity starting personality ubjec of utterance is ‘dalopical’, both S and A are = disguised within it. ; ; a “The procedure Thave just deseribed in confronting narration and the ia novel now abolishes distinctions between signifier and signified. It Epic monologism epic, structured at the limits of syncretism, illustrates the double lue of words in their post-syncretic phase: the utterance of a subject snus, Senioes, Teal Word, Dialogue and Novel 9 TD ineviabh by language as carrier of the concrete, but also a daily undertaking; a signifier, but also a signified. Cavers inet oe cleat. But in an epic, the speaker (subject two texts meet, contradict and relativize each other. ‘carnival panic unreal nila roth apr Te dg) ‘pant is both actor and spectator; he loses his sense of individuality, passes of oe jon of signs - the dialogica permutation of two through a zero point of carnivalesque activity and splits into a subject signifiers for one signified ‘takes place on the level of narration (through of the spectacle and an object of the game. Within the carnival, the seniierreaive word, of through the inbereacy ofthe text), It dose noe subject is reduced to nothingness, while the structure of the author aoe rorze itself atthe level of textual manifestation asin the stro emerges as anonymity that creates and sees itself created as self and , ite a ie nome at work within an epic, with no hint as ‘other, as man and mask. The cynicism of this carnivalesque scene, which yet of Bakhtin’s problematic the ambivalent word. The organizational destroys a god in order to impose its own dialogical laws, calls to mind Bar ea ‘ronologicel The dialogue ‘Nietzsche’s Dionysianism. The carnival first exteriorizes the structure princi of epic rte el enept within aratve instruct. of reflective literary productivity, then inevitably brings to light this language doe spe bruni pn t textual organization structure’s underlying unconscious: sexuality and death. Out of the There 0 dose = son the two aspects of n- dialogue that is established between them, the structural dyads of csi anciaton dieu pas rare wolute point of view, which carnival appeat: high and low, birth and agony, food and excrement, concides with the wholeness of god or community. Within epic praise and curses, laughter and tears. tmonologism, we detect the presence of th ‘transcendental signified’ Figures germane to carnivalesque language, including repetition, ‘and ‘self presence’ as highlighted by Jacques Derrida. . ‘inconsequent’ statements (which are none the less ‘connected’ within Tt is the systematic mode of language (similarity, according to an infinite context) and non-exclusive opposition, which function as ee de ants space. Metonymic contiguity, empty sets or disjunctive additions, produce a more flagrant dialogism nant Prev of language is rare. Of course, association than any other discourse. Disputing the laws of language based on the spertmcronymy are there as rhetorical figures, but they are neve® 0-1 interval, the carnival challenges God, authority and social law; in sed macoymy we See logic pursues the general to far as it ip ialogica, i is ebelious. Because ofits subversive of organizaon: within the structure iscourse, the word ‘carnival’ has understandably acquired a strongly twas specie ic i therefore case that is, theological it is derogatory of narrowly burlesque meaning in ou sce. oan the Lteal sense of the word. scene of the carnival, where there is no stage, no ‘theatre’ thus both stage and life, game and dream, discourse and spectacle. By ce {n the form of an anti-theological (b i and dimension where ‘ ‘ present as an often misunderstood D hose symptom is carnivalesque discourse, is the popular movemen official Western culture throughoutits entre ‘theatre might be the reading of oo, ir magn open history; ‘Romar * ere ide Renan). As composed ts ‘potential infinity’ (to use David Hilbert’ where prohibi- wi rose (oes jotes, ae see and non-exclusive oppositions, it _tlons (representation, ‘monologism’) and hee tanagrenion (aream, 2 eels mise 1 itis open rele, but without a stage; a game, body, ‘dialogism’) coexist. Carnivalesque tradition was absorbed into 50 Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality ‘Menippean discourse and put into practice by the polyphonic novel. Word, Dialogue and Nove! 31 . gave birth to two genres that reveal language's dialogism. Situated within ; ‘parodies and relativizes the carnivalesque tradition, and constituting the yeast of the European — the ee ee ecm ‘in so doing, it provokes __ novel, these two genres are Socratic dialogue and Menippean discourse. laughter but remains incapable of detaching itself from representation $ : Socratic dialogue: dialogism as a destruction of the person uival to ti Socratic dialogue was widespread in antiquity: Plato, Xenophon, “ Antisthenes, Aeschines, Phaedo, Euclid and others excelled in a only tow 7 inguinies, Semiotics, Textuality Word, Dialogue and Novel 33 ‘opening it up to the symbolic sphere. Adventures unfold in brothels, robbers’ dens, taverns, fairgrounds and from any representative function, as O another discourses this prisons, among erotic orgies and during sacred worship, and so forth. Speech afronts death, measuring iself against The word has no fear of incriminating itself. It becomes free from dialogue counts the Person out. and the ambivalent word presupposed ‘values’; without distinguishing between virtue and vice, ‘The resemblance between Socratic dialogu and without distinguishing itself from them, the word considers them of the novel is obviONS. tong, butt gave birth to sever] dialogical its private domain, as one ofits creations. Academic problems are pushed Socratic dialogue did not e ‘whose origins also lie in aside in favour of the ‘ultimate’ problems of existence: this discourse genres, including Menippean discourse, orients liberated language towards philosophical universalism. Without carnivalesque folklore. distinguishing ontology from cosmogony, it unites them into a prac- tical philosophy of life. Elements of the fantastic, which never appear Menippean discourse: the text as social activity in epic or tragic works, crop forth here. For example, an unusual ippus of Gadara, a perspective from above changes the scale of observation in Lucan’s Icaro- . a maseten fess itself in a novel descended from Menippean discourse. it together as an exploration of the body, dreams and language, this Word, Dialogue and Novel 55 56 Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality Word, Dialogue and Novel 37 out of the framework of causally determined identical substances and the light of the text elaborating itself as ambivalent in relation to | hhead towards another modality of thought that proceeds through text, ad dialogue (a logic of distance, relativity, analogy, non-exclusive and In the epic, on the other hand, A is an extra-textual, absolute entit transfinite opposition). It is therefore not surprising that the novel has (God or community) that relativizes dialogue to the point where it i been considered as an inferior genre (by neo-classicism and other similar cancelled out and reduced to monologue, With this in mind, it is eas regimes) or as subversive (have in mind the major writers of polyphonic to understand why not only the so-called ‘traditional novel ofthe nine. novels over many centuries ~ Rabelais, Swift, Sade, Lautréamont, Kafka teenth century, but also any novel with any ideological thesis what ‘and Bataille ~ to mention only those who have always been and still tends towards an epic, thus constituting a deviation in the very structure remain on the fringe of official culture). The way in which European of the novel; this is why Tolstoy's monologism is epic and Dostoevsky’ thought transgresses its constituent characteristics appears clearly in dialogism novelistic. 0 the words and narrative structures of the twentieth-century novel ‘Within the framework of the second model, several possibilities Identity, substance, causality and definition are transgressed so that be detected: ae Seria rce mig rnem mm toe Dt ee 3 inte ih. pe ‘Although this entre historical inventory that Bakhtin has undertaken eee evokes the image of a museum or the task of an archivist, it is none simples technique found atthe ineepton of ee saree i Everything written todas inception of the narrative. the les roted in our present concemns, Everything writen today unvels ip Te nbject ef Guceune (8p celaaace tah te cathe Teen Michel Butor insistently explored this technique in A Change of ‘The subject of utterance (S,) coincides both with the subject ubje enunciation (S) andthe address (A). Tn uch a case th corel “The first model implies « dialogical relationship, while the second § comaruted mantioce, Theses shitswseofpeponl first model determines genre (epic poem, novel) while the second eA actors) ed gaat ‘example of this fourth possibility. ‘Within the polyphonic structure of a novel, the first dislogical model reading of Bakhtin therefore leads to the paradigm shown in (S = A) plays itself out entirely within the writing discourse; and it presents itself as perpetually challenging this discourse. The writer's Interlocutor, then, is the writer himself, but as reader of another text. ‘The one who writes is the same as the one who reads. Since his inter- portance of certain new perspectives opened ocutor is a text, he himself is no more than a text re-reading itself as ish Large it rewrites itself, The dislogical structure, therefore, appears only in 58 Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality Practice God ‘Discourse’ ‘History’ Dialogism ‘Monologism Correlational iogic Aristotalen logic Phrase System Camival Narrative — Ambivalence Menippean discourse Polyphonic novel Figure 1 and rhetorical figures. The notion of status has added to the image of the text as a corpus of atoms that of a text made up of relationships, = i isa model for ‘within which words function as quantum units. If there Word, Dialogue and Novel 9 that falls in with non-Aristotelian, syntagmati ional, ‘carnival alsin Syntagmatic, correlational, ‘carnival- fsque’ logic. Consequently, one of the fundamental problems facing Gontemporay semiotics is pecsly o describe this ‘other lop without ‘The term ‘ambivalence’ lends itself perfectly to the current transitory 60 Linguistics, Semiotics, Textuality ‘of exrancous connotations currently surrounding that word, See his Of Grammatology, tr. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore, Ma: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). 3 Language is as old 2s consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists ‘also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally 28 ‘well’ Karl Marx, The German Ideology, tr. 8. Ryazanskaya, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 122. [The French ‘translation quoted by Kristeva isles faithful to the German text, although, in the latter part ofthe sentence, the German word for ‘genuine’ does modify ‘conscious - auch flr mich selbst echt existierende Bewruftsein;’ The French version begins ‘Le langage est a conscience réelle...” 4 T shall refer to only a few of Bakhtin’s notions in so far as they are congruent with. the conceptions of Ferdinand de Saussure as related to his ‘anagrams’ (see Jean ‘Starobinski, Les Mots sous let mots, Paris: Gallimard, 1971) and suggest « new ‘approach to literary texts. 5 Sce Julia Kristeva, La Revolution du langage pttique Pars: Seuil, 1974), pp. $9-60. 6 “Indeed, when structural semantics refers tothe linguistic foundations of discourse, it points out that ‘an expanding sequence is recognized a the equivalent of & syntactically simpler communication’ and defines ‘expansion’ as ‘one of the most is ie . J. Greimas, Sémantique structurale (Paris: Larousse, 1966), p. 72. I conceive of the notion of expansion 28 the theoretical principle authorizing me to study in the structure of genres an emeriorization (an expansion) of structures inherent to language. 7 B. F. Boudé, K isori elikonushix govoren (Towards a History of Russian Dialects) (Kazan: 1868). 8 L. V. Coorba, Vostchno-tushichoe nartchie (The Eastern Loujiks’ Dialect) (Petrograd: 1915). 9 V. V. Vinogradov, ‘O dialogicheskoj rechi’ (On dialogical discourse), in Russkaja ech, 1, p. 1440. 10 V. V. Vinogradov, Poetika (Moscow: Nauka, 1926), p. 33. 11 It seems that what is persistently being called ‘interior monologue’ is the most in-

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