Int.J.Eng.Lang.Lit&Trans.Studies Vol.3.Issue.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE, LITERATURE1.2016 (Jan-Mar)

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Vol. 3. Issue 1.,2016 (Jan-Mar. )

ON KRISTEVAN CONCEPT OF INTERTEXTUALITY

NIYATI KABTHIYAL1, Prof. SUREKHA DANGWAL2

1
Ph.D. Research Scholar, Dept. of English & MEOFL, HNBGU, Srinagar Garhwal
2
Dept. of English & MEOFL, HNBGU, Srinagar Garhwal

ABSTRACT
French feminist and Poststructuralist, Julia Kristeva hits upon her theory of
Intertextuality in the late 1960s, while she was engaged in her somewhat combined
study of Saussure and Bakhtin's theories of language and literature. She represents a
transitional phase described "in terms of a move from structuralism to
poststructuralism". Allen outlines the pervasive presence of 'intertextuality' in
contemporary major theoretical contexts. Accordingly, Intertextuality originates in
Kristevan blending of Saussure and Bakhtin. Its subsequent poststructuralist
articulation is evidenced in Roland Barthes and its variant, structuralist formulation in
Genettee and Riffaterre. Thereafter, the feminist and postcolonial theorists adopt
and adapt the term, which conform to their perspectives fairly well. Its widespread
application is, finally, seen "within the non-literary arts, the current cultural epoch
and modern computer technologies" (Allen 6).
Broadly speaking, Kristina's coinage 'Intertextuality' refers to interconnectedness of a
given text to other texts. It is argued that any text "can be analyzed in terms of the
other texts that it has absorbed and transformed. Thus, Intertextuality embraces
various forms of textual borrowing and echoing, such as allusion, parody, pastiche
and quotation". (Longhurst & Smith et al. 41)
Keywords: Intertextuality, subjectivity, speaking subject, semenalyse, geno-text,
pheno-text, semiotic chora, polyvalence, symbolic, polyphonic, ideologeme,
dialogism, heteroglossia, carnival, transposition, polysemy.
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Julia Kristeva (1941- ) is a Bulgarian born French theorist and a member of the Tel Quel group. She is
well-known for her inter and multidisciplinary studies where literature, linguistics psychoanalysis and
philosophy converge. She is a poststructuralist who has a certain fascination for "a psychologically inspired
exploration of subjectivity" of speaking subject, namely human being (Macey 218). Kristeva upholds Lacan's
thesis that human being with its entry into language (symbolic phase) enters the very stuff of subjectivity
enmeshed in the endless web of signification. In other words, human being becomes the human subject
embedded in and dominated by language, which precedes her/his existence.

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Kristeva is acknowledged to have developed a number of key concepts, such as semanalyse, the geno-
text and pheno-text, semiotic chora and symbolic, and intertextuality. According to Macey, Kristeva hits upon
and elaborates her outstanding concept of intertextuality during her studies of Mikhail Bakhtin. In a major
sequel of her essays she begins to formulate her theory of 'semanalysis', combining 'semiotics' and
'psychoanalysis', in which she studies the subject and her/his relations to the archaic drives and the pre-
linguistic elements that circulate in the chora and the semiotic (Ibid.).
Kristeva's one of the major works is Problems de la structuration du texte (tr. Word, Dialogue and
Novel) in which she propounds her theory of intertextuality. Kristevan concept of "intertextuality" is built upon
Bakhtin's notion of "polyphonic" utterances, that is to say, a free play of at times contesting voices in a single
text such as a novel" (Lane 189). In her notion of "textuality" the ideologeme forms its micrological unit. In
other words, in a system the smallest ideological component is the ideologme. Lane further explains that to
Kristeva:
The ideologeme coordinates the connectivity of texts to form an intertextual network of meaning
(e.g. the coordination of semiotic and symbolic system). The act of reading/writing becomes the
transformative reorganization of the socio-historical intertextual work". (Ibid.)
Kristeva perceives the structuralism as leaning towards the closed systems. Her concept of intertextuality
presents its antithesis in which she argues "in favour of the open systems of poststructuralism". She, therefore,
formulates "a wider theory of text as 'productivity' where there is always a subject-in-process spoken and
situated by the relations between sign systems" (Lane 190). Intertextuality, thus, constitutes one significant
component of her theory of textual productivity.
Kristeva in the 1960s coined the term intertextuality, which may be taken as an attempt on her part
to synthesize her readings of Saussure's structural semiotics and Bakhtin's 'dialogism' (double-voicing in novel)
and 'hetroglossia' (other- languageness), which may produce "multivalence" or "plurisignation" in a work of
art. In his book's 'introduction' section Peter Barry sums up Bakhtin's contribution in the field of literary theory
in the following words:
Bakhtin admires the way the literary text is never 'univocal' (single-voiced) but generates a riotous
plurality of meanings. He sees this as being especially so of the novel, which for him is characterized
by its 'heteroglossia' (the word means 'different tongues') whereby the text provides us with a
dialogue or carnival of many different voices, some ironic, some humorous, some self-mocking or self-
parodying. Within this textual carnival there can be no place for the reasoned, authoritative, single
voice to silence all others and impose a fixed and reliable version of the events depicted, for the text
is by nature anarchic rather than authoritarian.(Barry 17)
Kristeva "challenges traditional notions of literary influence, saying that intertextuality denotes a
transposition of one or several sign systems into another or others" (Cuddon 424). She borrows the term
'transposition' from Freudian psychoanalysis and uses it not only to point out as to how texts tend to echo
each other, but also "the way that discourses or sign systems are transposed in one kind of discourse are
overlaid with meanings from another kind of discourse" (Ibid.). To her such a discourse manifests a kind of
'new articulation'.
Noëlle McAfee expresses his disagreement with the view in which the term intertextuality is
mistakenly construed to mean "the way texts intersect or can be analysed together" (26). To him "passage
from one sign system to another is what she meant by the term, which indicates the way in which one
signifying system is transposed into another one. Kristeva explains her view-point about intertextuality as
under:
The term intertextuality denotes this transposition of one (or several) sign system(s) into another; but
since the term has often been understood in the banal sense of "study of resources," we prefer the
term transposition because it specifies that the passage from one signifying system to another
demand a new articulation . . . . If one grants that every signifying practice is a field of transpositions
of various signifying systems (an inter-textuality), . . . . In this way polysemy [multiple levels or kinds of

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meaning] can also be seen as the result of semiotic polyvalence – an adherence to different sign
systems. (Kristeva cited in McAfee 26)
It is held that signifying practices by their nature, being the result of multiple origins or drives are unable to
produce a simple and uniform meaning. The speaking being furnishes the field where from issues forth the
signifying practices leading to textual production, and hence Kristeva "has insisted that the study of language is
inseparable from the study of speaking being . . . . Her study of signifying practice rests on psychoanalytic
theory, drawing a developmental picture of the speaking being . . ." (McAfee 26-27).
We need to take note of the point that in Bakhtin's notion of the "dialogic" a mutual relationship is
discernible among the author, work, reader, society and history. In such a situation it would be fallacious to
look at the text as something like an individual and isolated object. A text rather than that looks like a
compilation of cultural textuality. A kind of interplay is implied in Bakhtin's notion of the "dialogue" although
he never used the term "intertextuality". Under the influence of Bakhtin, Kristeva comes to believe that the
individual text and the cultural text are made from the same textual material. They cannot be separated from
each other: the speaking subject and the medium (the signifying practices) converge.
The point of similarity between Bakhtin and Kristeva is that they both subscribe to the view that texts
are constructed out of the larger cultural or social textuality and hence they cannot be separated from that
context. All texts are, therefore, embedded in ideological structures expressed through discourse. Non-the-
less, it is equally important to draw a distinction between the two: Bakhtin's works center on human subject,
the author-writer, using language in specific social situation; whereas Kristeva's works focus more on abstract
notions, such as the text and textuality, and their relation to ideological structures. As has been already stated,
to Kristeva a text is a conglomeration of or a compilation of cultural textuality.
Kristeva's main concern in her essays "the Bounded Text" (36-63) and "Word, Dialogue, and Novel
(64-91) is to examine the manner in which a text is constructed out of the already existing discourse. The
essays as mentioned above form the part of her work Desire in Language : A Semiotic Approach to Literature
and Art (1980). In the work she claims that authors do not create their texts from their own mind, but rather
compile them from pre-existent texts. Authors and texts are influenced by linguistic and textual processes.
Kristeva is also known to have introduced to the Western academy the then unknown Russian
Formalist thinker, Mikhail Bakhtin. She explains and develops Bakhtin's notions of inter-textuality, dialogic and
the carnivalization of the novel genre so well that she soon gets a job offer to teach in the United States, which
she refuses to accept as a protest against American involvement in Vietnam. She instead prefers to join the Tel
Quel group. In her first book, Semiotike : Recherches pour une Semanalyse (tr. Semiotics: Investigations for
Semanalysis) she writes about Bakhtin:
Writer as well as "scholar", Bakhtin was one of the first to replace the static hewing out of texts with a
model where literary structure does not simply exist but is generated in relation to another structure.
What allows a dynamic dimension to structuralism is his conception of the "literary word" as an
intersection of textual surfaces rather than a point (a fixed meanings), as a dialogue among several
writings: that of the writer, the addressee (or the character), and the contemporary or earlier cultural
context. (Kristeva cited in McAfee 5)
Kristeva, thus, visualizes the text as embodying society's conflict over the meaning of the words. She,
therefore, denies any possibility to texts as presenting any clear and stable meanings. She sees texts as
thoroughly linked to ongoing cultural and social processes. This being the case, the text has no unity or unified
meaning of its own. According to Kristeva a text's meaning is understood as a temporary re-arrangement of
elements with socially pre-existent meaning. Such a perspective allows meaning to be seen as a
simultaneously residing 'inside' (reader's view) and 'outside' (society's influence) the text.
To Peter Barry, poststructuralists tend to discover divergent cross-currents of meaning in texts. The
text becomes sites, where the 'unconscious' of the text emerge into and disrupt the 'conscious' or 'surface'
meaning (124). Kristeva views the 'conscious' as represented by the symbolic aspect of language, while the
non-obvious 'unconscious' content of the text is represented by the semiotic aspect of signification and

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communication. Roughly speaking, semiotic chora is pre-Oedipal, pre-symbolic phase, which can be equated
with Lacan's 'imaginary' and the 'symbolic' with his term of same denomination.
An intertextual relation between words and their prior-circulation in proceeding or say past texts are
the things that influence the communication between the author and reader. That is why according to Kristeva
"any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another"
(Kristeva 66). The term "Subjectivity" is Kristeva's substitution for the conventional term the "self”. She
perceives subjectivity as a dynamic process which never comes to completion. For the human subject, to be
living alludes to continue in a state of change. Moreover, this speaking subject has to have full awareness of
her/his personal intentions. The subject is fully capable to act as an autonomous being situated in the World,
and guided by her/his rational or intellectual faculty.
Kristeva visualizes "subjectivity" (as a process) and relates it to both language and the play of psychic
drives and impulses within the speaking being anterior to language. To her subject is not a unified identity but
a split between the two signifying fields. She, accordingly, considers a speaking being "a subject in process/ on
trial" formed in the "practice of the text", which remind one of Bakhtin's terms, monologic and dialogic poles.
Traces of which, one can have in both a psychoanalytic discourse and artistic practice. On the basis of her
readings of Lane and Habib et al the researcher has drawn a diagram which is given below (fig. 1). The diagram
is intended to present a broad view of Kristevan psychoanalytical perspective (admitting two different aspects
of the same language: the semiotic and symbolic poles), in which she sees the text as a product of an
intercalated relationship between language and speaking being (subject), and situate both within in an overall
socio-cultural and historical-political environment.
Structuralism is supposed to view text-function as a closed system or a kind of sealed universe, in which a text
is perceived to exist as a "hermatic or self-sufficient whole", using the words of Michael Worton and Judith Still
(1). The concept of intertextuality is, therefore, seen as a counter-point to this rather narrower and
generalized view of the text. Intertextuality interrogates any claim to textual originality and uniqueness. To
support this claim, two reasons are commonly ascribed to justify textual open-endedness accruing from
intertextuality. They are:
Firstly, the writer is a reader of texts (in the broadest sense before s/he is a creator of texts, and
therefore the work of art is inevitably shot through with reference, quotations and influences of every
kind. . . . secondly a text is available only through some process of reading; what is produced at the
moment of reading is due to cross-fertilization of the packaged textual material (say a book) by all the
texts which the reader brings to it (Worton and Still 1-2).
To sum up, Kristevan perspective, therefore, allow us to celebrate the plurality and to see the texts as
emotionally, politically and culturally charged, for both the "axes of intertextuality" are subject to temporal
contextuality of the world that surrounds authors as human beings. The two axes of intertextuality are : (i)
texts entering via authors (who are, first, readers)" and (ii) texts entering via readers (co-producers)" (Ibid. 2).
Theorists across various disciplines of knowledge have been drawn towards the writings of Kristeva "to look
into how the speaking, desiring, subject in process influences art, literature, dance, philosophy and theology"
(McAfee 120).
Graham Allen argues that since the theory of intertextuality has been a vital and productive influence
in literary theory and cultural studies in the recent past, its impact is very likely to continue in the future, also
because the term (intertextuality) has gained currency of a potent tool within reader's theoretical vocabulary.
The theory of intertextuality has two main strands and they both underscore its prime feature of
interconnectedness. We may conclude the foregoing discussion on intertextuality with Allen's apt remarks:
Whether it be based in poststructuralist or Bakhtinian theories, or in both, intertextuality reminds us
that all texts are potentially plural, reversible, open to the reader's own presuppositions, lacking in
clear and defined boundaries, and always involved in the expression or repression of the dialogic
'voice' which exist within society. A term which continually refers to the impossibility of singularity,
unity, and thus of unquestionable authority. . . . (209)

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Works Cited
Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. London & New York: Routledge. 2000.
Barry, Peter (ed.). Issues in Contemporary Critical Theory. London: McMillan, 1987.
Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New Delhi: Penguin Bks. India (P)
Ltd. 2010.

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Habib, M.A.R. A History of Literary Criticism : From Plato to the Present. (First Indian Rpt.). New Delhi: Atlantic
Pubs. and Distributors, 2006.
Kristeva, J. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Leon S. Roudiez (ed.), T. Gora et al.
(trans.) New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
Lane, Richard J. Fifty Key Literary Theorists. New York; London: Routledge, 2006.
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Longhurst, Brain, Greg Smith et al. Introducing Cultural Studies. (2 ed., Ist impr.). New Delhi: Pearson, 2011.
Macey, David. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. New Delhi : Penguin Bks. 2001
McAfee, Noëlle. Julia Kristeva. New York and London: Routledge, (First Indian Reprint), 2007.
Worton, Michael and Judith Still (ed.). Intertextuality: Theories and Practices. Manchester; New York:
Manchester University Press.1990.

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