Head Cases
Julia Kristeva on Philosophy and Art in Depressed Times Elaine P. Miller Using th e p h i los o ph e r ’ s vast bo dy o f wo r k to s h ow h ow art c a n ac t as a n a n t i d ot e , if n ot a c ur e , to d e pr essi o n .
While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the imagination to unblock important sources of meaning. She also appreciates the process through which creative acts counteract and transform feelings of violence and depression.
Elaine P. Miller considers Kristeva’s “aesthetic idea” and “thought spectacular” and their capacity to reshape depressive thought. She revisits Kristeva’s reading of Walter Benjamin with reference to melancholic art and the imagination’s allegorical structure; her analysis of Byzantine iconoclasm in relation to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of negation and Hegel’s dialectical negativity; her understanding of Proust as an exemplary practitioner of sublimation; her rereading of Kant and Arendt in terms of art as an intentional lingering with foreignness; and her argument that forgiveness is a philosophical and psychoanalytic method of transcending a “stuck” existence. Focusing on specific works that illustrate Kristeva’s ideas, from ancient Greek tragedy to early photography, contemporary installation art, and film, Miller positions creative acts as a form of “spiritual inoculation” against the violence of our society and its discouragement of reflection. Elaine P. Miller
“Deftly moving through Kristeva’s corpus, Miller brilliantly stages engagements between Kristeva’s thought and that of Adorno, Arendt, Augustine, Benjamin, Freud, Green, Hegel, Kant, Klein, Lacan, and Proust, among others. Her analysis also sheds light on some of Kristeva’s most intractable concepts, including negativity, the uncanny, time, the semiotic, mimesis, art, and the aesthetic. Head Cases is filled with keen insights, rigorous scholarship, and beautiful prose.” —Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University
is professor of philosophy at
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Miami University and the author of The Vegetative Soul: From Philosophy of Nature to Subjectivity in the Feminine and the coeditor of Returning to Irigaray. $40.00* / £27.50 cloth 978-0-231-16682-9 $39.99 / £27.50 ebook 978-0-231-53711-7 M a r c h 304 pages P h i lo s o p h y / Ps yc h o lo g y Co lu m b i a T h e m e s i n P h i lo s o p h y, S o c i a l Cr i t i c i s m , a n d t h e Arts
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