From one Identity to Another by Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva, a French theorist, in this essay talks about two stages, ‘semiotic’ and ‘symbolic’. She divides ‘semiotic’ and ‘symbolic’ from each other and says that all significations are composed out of these two elements.

Semiotics stages is mother stage. It is pre-oedipal stage. In Lockanian term, it is like mirror stage whereas in Freudian term, it is unconscious stage. A child identifies himself with mother. Since the child’s impulses center on the mother, there is harmony between them.

His personality is not formulated or developed. For Lacan, the child does not know language to which we know as mirror stage. But for Kristeva, child learns language from mother and this language is disordered and fragmented. It is mere chaotic, nobody clearly understands. The child freely produces sound that is the beginning of language learning. Here is no rule but free expression. Since, the mother is on the center, she teaches the language to her child. Here, child uses intonation, rhythm, and musical language.

It is associated with the maternal body, the first source of rhythms, tones and movements for every human being. It is poetic, disorderly and musical. So, this is the source of poetry. So mother is in a way, source for poetry. Kristeva calls this semiotic stage as ‘chora’. It is the pre-verbal stage of learning language.

The poetic language is related with speaking subject. But as the child grows up, he becomes aware of his father’s presence and he also finds his identity through his name in signifying system. Anyway, the disordered and chaotic language of semiotic stage does not disappear but remains beneath the symbolic.

In another side, symbolic stage is father stage. In a sense, it is rule-governed stage. So, it is related with authoritarian discourses. Father stands for law and authority. Here, the language is ordered, structured, patterned. This stage occurs after the child acquires his subject position in the language. In another word, it is associated with grammar and structure of significations.

It always undergoes conflict with semiotics since it wants to impose the rule upon language, so grammatical world suppresses the ungrammatical world. The free expression and poetic language are suppressed by symbolic stage. Semiotic keeps threat on symbolic order.

Symbolic order wants to defeat the semiotic but the very order is always threatened by the semiotic pleasure. It means a semiotic language comes out in the form of wine, sex, song and even in the time of revolution. Semiotic is always repressed by linguistic (symbolic) order. When semiotic gets chance, it comes out. Semiotic comes out in the form of laughter and poetry too.

But, Kristeva does not mean that it is possible and easy to produce the work of art that is completely full of semiotic. On the one hand, words give life because of their semiotic content. On the other hand, without symbolic, all signification would be the babble. There is no signification without some combination of both semiotic and symbolic. It means there must be integration between these two stages to produce meaning of a text. Kristeva says, that transcendental ego exists in symbolic stage and it seeks meaning. Husserl says that transcendental ego emerges from the reduction of empirical ego but Kristeva says that transcendental ego interacts with speaking subject of semiotic, which produces meaning. To sum up, semiotic languages tries to break the authority of symbolic language, which is orderly. Only semiotic language cannot give the sense. Here, if we analyze arguments from feministic point of view, semiotic stage refers to female pole whereas male pole is identified by the symbolic stage.