Perchance to dream

A renowned philosopher, psychoanalyst, feminist and sociologist, French-Bulgarian writer Julia Kristeva is calling for the reestablishment of humanism.

PARIS − February 2012. Julia Kristeva has invited me to her home in the sixth arrondissement. When I arrive at her house, I see a stone inscription on the front of the building: “In this house lived the French historian Jules Michelet,” and below it a metal plaque from the municipality: “Demolition authorization.” I enter the yard, climb an old stairway.

Julia Kristeva − the Bulgarian-French author, essayist and psychoanalyst − opens the door and leads me into a spacious drawing room surrounded entirely by bookshelves. She leans toward the table to pour tea into china cups and briefly explains about the blend of tea leaves she bought for the occasion. “You wanted to ask me a few questions?”

Her directness and generosity surprise me; she exudes warmth, pleasantness, joy at my having come all this way. Before answering my questions, she turns to me and says: “I trust you will translate my positions in a reliable manner for Haaretz’s readers, but do not neglect also the precision and subtlety of the understanding we have between us, between me and you.” Here then is the interview, which was conducted in French.

You have written and published about 20 books of philosophy and criticism − including “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection” and “Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia” − and four novels. Does the craft of writing still hold significance today as an intellectual and emotional tool?

Kristeva: “This is an extreme era, rich in cultural developments and regressions. Digitalism causes the Web to penetrate every layer of society. We are flooded with assets that cannot as yet be evaluated in existing terms of information or human liberty. However, we have yet to internalize what danger this technological progress creates with regard to the very meaning of the word ‘liberty.’ In my work I take the changes that are taking place in the history of literature and art, and in the history of religions, very seriously.

“The developments in these fields indicate a deepening of the human ability to generate meaning. Beginning with the mystical tradition − through literary work, and ending with the creative adventure of the image in painting and in cinema − our civilization developed an ‘inner experience,’ as philosophy terms it. This ‘inner experience’ toils to create the new significance of our happiness. That is our liberty, to use Simone de Beauvoir’s term. What I wish to say is that liberty is not a matter of choice, as many think today, when they confuse, for example, the experience of art and the consumption of art − as though being free might boil down to the freedom to buy one product instead of another product.

“Following in the Greek, Jewish and Christian traditions, and in light of the breach of enlightenment − liberty means a challenging, deepening and constant renewal of human subjectivity itself, that of the man and that of the woman, each in his and her irrevocable uniqueness. At bottom, the inner experience is dedicated to this; it is our only remaining resistance to the elementary language that dominates the media outlets to which we are connected with a kind of meta-connection. It is the only resistance to the reduction of contemporary politics to the technical management of our needs − more or less successful management or, more precisely, more or less unsuccessful.

“To answer your question more directly: Yes, I am willing to bet that the experience of thinking, of writing, of painting or of music − seeing as it is structured as a constant inquiry into any identity, be it national, gender or religious identity, when it casts doubt on every form, genre or existing code of communication − this experience is the only antidote to the banality of the new evil inherent in the danger of the automatization and atomization of the human race.”

‘Sin of feminine optimism’

In recent lectures and interviews, you attested to a sense of “the end of an era”; that the humanist infrastructure of the second half of the 20th century is now in doubt, and, as a result of this, the status of the written and spoken tongue is being wholly undermined.

“The term ‘humanism’ arouses great worry and great hope. In fact, more worry than hope considering its many failures: the Holocaust, the Gulag ... We needn’t say more. These failures raise a simple question. Is there another option? In order to contend with this question, we must recall the history of humanism, starting with Erasmus of Rotterdam and his ‘The Praise of Folly’; through Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 300th anniversary of whose birth was this year, and whose oeuvre, both political and personal, might be summed up by the phrase ‘in praise of enlightenment’; and ending with Freud, that atheist Jew, who taught us to take seriously the intersection between body and mind, biology and significance, an intersection he calls ‘the unconscious.’

“This humanism tends to be forgotten too easily, there is no sincere effort to truly understand it, to return to it and reinterpret it. Why? Because when humanism is reduced to humanitarian action only, the complexity of experiencing it is damaged. I am not saying that humanitarian action is a waste of time; I think that the oppressed cities of the world need every means of development we have to give, and that the international institutions must enlist and help in various disaster zones. But the matter is far more tragic and fundamental: We have to understand each time anew the meaning of the expression ‘humane.’ The renewed and constant evaluation of the humanist tradition will prove that humanism is not wishy-washy thinking, but rather it is proper that it be called for at all times. After Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism,’ after Sartre’s essay that claims existentialism is humanism, I dare to think that humanism must be reestablished. Am I committing the sin of feminine optimism?

“’Rebirth has never been beyond my powers,’ the writer Colette declares forcefully − and I seek to take her words to heart. We must try to reestablish humanism, and in an ongoing manner, by dealing with the new problems that crop up daily in the current events of the 21st century. More precisely, we must locate and accompany the challenges and projects of new social actors: women, of course, but also young people with their new mental illnesses, their addictions and vandalism, which reflect an aspiration for an ideal that society cannot uphold; and the elderly, who are on the cusp of life as it is seen through the disability of the aging body; and lastly, and no less important, the multiplicity of beliefs that bring with them the current spiritual revival that is naive and dissatisfied, and at the same time inspires awe at man’s ability to conceal, beneath the defenses and illusions, hopes and original forms of being.”

As a linguist, psychoanalyst and literary scholar, you have taught for many years at universities in Paris and New York. You were among the pillars of the new interdisciplinary thinking that developed in the 1960s in France. Where is the university headed?

“Because of the economic crises and austerity, the state of the university is deteriorating; likewise culture as a whole. But the university is suffering from a more serious crisis, which may be termed a metaphysical crisis. In answer to your earlier questions, I mentioned several of the forms this has taken. Should the university be eliminated or the modes of teaching reduced to adapt them to the ‘thin tongue’ of the global consumer and media culture? I doubt it.

“In keeping with my bet on humanism, I place my trust in there being a need to preserve and renew the educational institutions, and the university in particular. I think the university should be opened to new objects of knowledge: artificial inseminations, the conflicts between religions, the new political factors I mentioned earlier − these are just a few examples. This requires changing the definition of disciplines, creating transitions and bonds between them, while ensuring that this interdisciplinarity doesn’t overflow quickly into the frivolity of the media; the open-mindedness must preserve the precision of thought that is the path which encyclopedists of the 18th century paved for us.

“You see, I am brimming with ambition: We lack a new ‘encyclopedist spirit’ in order for the university to live. Not a university of degrees and careers, but rather a university that stands at the heart of society and culture, in the town square.”

Your work has dealt with the high points of 20th-century French literature. You wrote books of literary criticism about Marcel Proust and Louis-Ferdinand Celine − difficult writers, whose scandalous work is accompanied by the creation of a unique writing style. Might we conjecture or predict the future development of literary style in the 21st century?

“Obviously it is impossible to predict future modes of writing. Style, by definition, is always springing forth in surprise or even ecstasy, if I may use that exaggerated phrasing. Style means being outside yourself, outside the norm, outside the language of communication itself. Mallarme spoke in this context about a ‘complete new word, foreign to the language.’ You understand why nobody can predict style, myself included.

Nevertheless we can say, and Marcel Proust and Celine demonstrate this well, that those people who truly are capable of sensing rebellion inside themselves − so long as they are present within the bounds of thought and speech − are necessarily risk-taking and risk-making individuals, who stand on the seam between life and death − Samurai of a sort in a world of media and consumption people.

“I dwell on this point in order to say to you that the inventors of style must transverse the boundaries of existence, through what we call perversion, psychosis, through radical evil. And by the word ‘transverse,’ I mean to bear, burn, displace, refine. It is easy to say, hard to do. Let us try nonetheless.”

The question of ‘the genesis’

The tension between the civil state and religion is at the heart of the public discourse in Israeli society, and has also found new expressions in recent years. Recently, the most basic liberties of women have been placed in doubt because of the growing power of certain ultra-Orthodox circles. In your work you achieve creative integration between theological texts and modern texts, for example in your book “Tales of Love.” Can this textual thinking be translated into pragmatic thinking?

“I thank you for this question. It reminds me of a wonderful book by the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, which came out recently. It deals, among other things, with the question of the possibility for the humanities to shed light on the various religious beliefs and even on divine speech, as he put it. I think this is the first time that a spiritual figure of such high standing has accepted the legitimacy of phenomenological thought and also of psychoanalysis itself, in a dialogue that is not merely a semblance of partnership, but rather one that makes it possible to question each other’s positions and still move forward together.

“Here again I am gambling, for that is all we have left to do, right? What is preferable: to fall into deep melancholy and fend it off in the guise of anger − which might lead to the toppling of dictators, as is happening now with the present revolution in the Arab world, without putting something else in their place, but crowning other dictators in their stead who threaten the most vulnerable liberties, especially those of women? Or perhaps to wager that the social realm can indeed contain these difficult wonderings, which seemingly appear too elitist, even opaque, to contain those questions that are posed in the humanities, in art and literature?

“The example of Rabbi Bernheim is very significant in this regard. I myself am attempting to find a pragmatic solution to this problem by setting up a forum of psychoanalysis and religion in cooperation with Israeli analysts from the Freud Center for Study and Research in Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Right now we are trying to organize a second conference of the forum, which will possibly deal with the question of ‘the genesis’ − a subject that surely may be relevant to both clerics and women: biological genesis and divine genesis; the place of the woman in birth, in love and social ties. So many weak points that must be dealt with again in a world that never stops putting us to the test.

“With regard to your question: A while ago the pope [Benedict XVI] invited me to the city of Assisi in Italy for an interfaith gathering. This gathering was very common in the days of Pope John Paul II, and this was the first time that it was being held by the current pope. I believe this was the first time in the history of the church that nonbelievers were also invited to the gathering. There were four of us, and I was appointed ‘head of the delegation.’

“As I understand it, this was quite an event, because among the various representatives of the religions ‏(there were, of course, Jewish, Christian and Muslim representatives in attendance, but also from Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism and so forth‏), not only were the nonbelievers granted representation without the Church fearing that we would call for decadence or nihilism, but the delegation was led by a woman. I was the last one to address the conference and the pope, who spoke immediately afterward, gave an exceptional speech.

“Two things that he said left their mark on me: First, he emphasized the fact that violence does not accord with religion, with any religion, and yet he acknowledged that the history of Christianity is suffused with violence ‏(the Inquisitions, the Crusades, and other acts of massacre‏) and admonished the religions that continue to employ violence today.

“The second thing that made an impression on me was that the pope insisted that believers must not perceive themselves as ‘masters of the truth,’ but rather should take an example in some way from the voice of the nonbelievers, in whose name I spoke, because for the nonbeliever ‘the truth’ is a process, a discussion, a constant difficulty. One could hear in the pope’s speech the words of a philosopher who questions the history of Western philosophy, a kind of Nietzsche or Heidegger. That is encouraging, is it not?”

You travel a great deal, you meet many people in the world. In recent months you traveled to Assisi and immediately afterward you received an honorary doctorate in Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, you continue to work regularly with patients in hospitals and, in collaboration with your students, in prisons. How do you manage to combine these assorted activities? How do you create synthesis?

“I actually really love to sleep. I sleep a lot. I wrote about this in the catalog for an exhibition of plastic art that dealt with insomnia ‏(an excellent exhibition that my friend Marie Shek curated and was put on in Paris and in Israel a few years ago‏). There I had a good opportunity to say that I like deep sleep, during which I am able to find solutions to all sorts of problems. In my childhood, as a high school student in Bulgaria, they were mathematical problems, and since then I moved on to stylistic or philosophical problems that preoccupy me during the day. However, sometimes I suspend my sleep, send a few e-mails, do office work, and go back to sleep to carry on the pleasurable contact with the unconscious at nighttime.

“I have very little fun, because in practice I am forced to organize my time between family relations and the various elements within the frameworks I am a part of. I manage to do this with great difficulty, and I am very lucky that I am happily accepted by my family, at the university and among my analyst friends in the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. But to be precise, in order to be able to truly meet the challenge of the 21st century, you must be totally open to others and to a variety of fields of thought. In contending with this boiling, unity is indeed a beautiful and necessary notion.

“Unity is the first condition for concentration and attentiveness, and for making progress on your projects. Anyone who does not possess unity, who has failed to understand the message of monotheism and cannot translate it into the modern world, lives on the margins of the truth, or so it seems to me. However, the universe changes. Astronomy − and, more precisely, modern cosmology − has discovered spaces that do not abide by the rules of our world. It seems that time itself no longer exists in these new worlds, and that new spaces are being discovered, of five, six or seven dimensions. Cosmology calls these types of universe ‘multiverses.’

“To borrow this metaphor, we could say that the world ahead of us demands that we be ‘multiverse,’ each according to his possibilities and limitations. It is most important not to barricade oneself or flee out of pretensions of possessing the One Truth. Yes, it is important for there to be truth, but its uniqueness as bequeathed to us by Judaism and Christianity must be conjoined with openness, harmonization and composition of the ‘multiverse.’ Psychoanalysis has an important role to play in translating the universe into a ‘multiverse,’ because it accentuates the important role of the paternal figure, which follows in the footsteps of the Creator, in the formation of a unified subject, self-confident and capable of renewal, capable of creating and placing itself in jeopardy.

“At the same time, psychoanalysis demonstrates that this unity is surrounded by shadow regions, that it is rebuilt again and again, contains the depths of maternal reliance, is exposed to combinations that might harm it before they create it. All those pre-Oedipal or post-Oedipal structures, regardless of how many, enable us to understand the crises of the modern subjectivity, to accompany them and transform the tragedies of distress into creativity. It is in everyone’s power to be reborn and create his ‘multiverse.’ Everyone has the capacity to dream.”

Ilai Rowner is a literature researcher and critic. He is a former student of Kristeva’s, and wrote his PhD thesis under her guidance.