Religion, atheism, and the crisis of meaning in Julia Kristeva’s critique of modernity

David Koloszyc

2010

OpenAlex

https://openalex.org/W2547103727

This study examines the development of Julia Kristeva's thought on religion and its relevance to her critique of modernity. The study argues that Kristeva's concern with the 'crisis of religion' occupies a central place in her work and permeates all of her inquiries into the linguistic, textual, literary, epistemological, subjective, social, political, and ethical dimensions of what she considers an all-encompassing 'crisis of meaning' in contemporary Western culture.%%%%Chapter one considers the manner in which Kristeva's early textual practice emphasizes the necessity of a multifaceted response to the 'crisis of meaning' by situating her concepts of negativity, productivity, ambiguity and intertextuality between Maurice Blanchot's thought of the neuter and Jacques Derrida's thought of differance.%%%%Chapter two addresses Kristeva's effort to affirm the capacity of modern literature to inscribe a new experience of meaning into the metaphysical void left in the wake of the 'death of God', with particular attention paid to the distinct ways in which she and Blanchot conceptualize the correspondence between literary experience and the experience of atheism.%%%%Chapter three explores the critical tensions that accompany Kristeva's psychoanalytic engagement with religious texts and her changing assessment of their significance for the experience of contemporary subjectivity. The chapter also examines the proximity between Derrida's encounter with negative theology and Kristeva's encounter with 'the unnamable' at the intersection of psychoanalytic and religious language.%%%%Chapter four investigates Kristeva's analysis of the 'crisis of secularism' at the turn of the millennium as well as her growing concern with the reduction of human knowledge and experience to techno-scientific and economic logic in late modernity, the limits and possibilities of liberal democracy, and the necessity of a fundamental reassessment of the religious dimensions of Western humanism.%%%%Seen as a major thread that links all of her critical endeavors, Kristeva's engagement with religion allows for a better understanding of the nuances, transformations, and impasses of her thought. Consequently, this inquiry opens new questions concerning the 'religious' character of the 'speaking subject', offers extensive contributions to a critical reconsideration of the social, political, and ethical implications of the relationship between religion and secularism, and draws attention to the indispensability of an elaborate cultural encounter between religious and humanist discourses in the 21st century.%%%%Cette these a pour but d'examiner le developpement du concept de religion chez Kristeva et d'analyser son importance par rapport a la critique kristevienne de la modernite. Dans cette etude, nous proposons que la 'crise de la religion' impregne l'analyse kristevienne de la 'crise du sens' dans la societe occidentale actuelle. Ainsi, la 'crise de la religion' est d'une importance primordiale dans l'uvre kristevienne, se manifestant a tous les …

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