The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism)

Freud and psychoanalysis taught us that rebellion is what guarantees our independence and our creative abilities. But in the contemporary "entertainment" culture, is rebellion still a viable option? Is it still possible to build and embrace a counterculture? For whom―and against what?

Julia Kristeva illustrates the advances and impasses of rebel culture through the experiences of three twentieth-century writers: the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, the surrealist Louis Aragon, and the theorist Roland Barthes. These figures, according to Kristeva, took part in a revolution against accepted notions of identity―of one’s relation to others. She places their accomplishments in the context of other revolutionary movements in art, literature, and politics, also offering an illuminating discussion of Freud’s groundbreaking work on rebellion.

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.”