Choreographing the Borderline

Philosophy Today 56 (1):49-58 (2012)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this paper I will investigate Kristeva’s conception of dance in regard to the trope of the borderline. I will begin with her explicit treatments of dance, the earliest of which occurs in Revolution in Poetic Language, in terms of (a) her analogy between poetry and dance as practices erupting on the border of chora and society, (b) her presentation of dance as a phenomenon bordering art and religion in rituals, and (c) her brief remarks on dance gesturality. I will then follow this latter movement to the 1969 essay “Gesturality,” to critically examine where Kristeva situates the powers and limits of gesture (and thereby dance) in relation to language. Next, I will move to the later text, The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt, where the image of dance figures prominently in what I will term Kristeva’s joyful re-choreographing of Freud’s text Totem and Taboo. I will also see how her treatment of dance links more directly to Kristeva’s feminist concerns, insofar as she understands the process of choreography as a kind of maternal function neglected in most psychoanalytic thought.

Similar books and articles

Review of Julia Kristeva's Hatred and Forgiveness. [REVIEW]Subhasis Chattopadhyay - 2016 - Prabuddha Bharata or Awakened India 121 (10):721-22.
On Kristeva's Fiction.Benigno Trigo - 2013 - Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 21 (1):60-82.
Julia Kristeva’s The Severed Head.Pleshette DeArmitt - 2013 - Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 21 (1):116-119.
Julia Kristeva’s Maternal Passions.Kelly Oliver - 2010 - Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 18 (1):1-8.
Melanie Klein.Julia Kristeva - 2001 - Columbia University Press.
Julia Kristeva and the Politics of Life.Sarah K. Hansen - 2013 - Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 21 (1):27-42.
Borderline cases and bivalence.Diana Raffman - 2005 - Philosophical Review 114 (1):1-31.
Kristeva: Thresholds.Stacey Keltner - 2011 - Malden, Mass.: Polity.
Kristeva.Stacey Keltner - 2013 - Polity.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-07-22

Downloads
295 (#62,674)

6 months
98 (#35,993)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Joshua M. Hall
University of Alabama, Birmingham

Citations of this work

Judith Butler and a Pedagogy of Dancing Resilience.Joshua M. Hall - 2020 - Journal of Aesthetic Education 54 (3):1-16.
Self-Mimetic Curved Silvering: Dancing with Irigaray.Joshua Maloy Hall - 2014 - Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 22 (1):76-101.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references