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Passions of Our Time is a broad collection, covering most of Kristeva’s writings over the recent decades concerning the topics of psychoanalysis, linguistics, literary criticism, politics,
philosophy, gender, sexuality, religion and cultural critique. This book makes it also clear how importantly the themes of humanism, femininity and psychoanalysis intermingle and give profound inspiration to our clinical work as psychoanalysts.
Starting with a moving chapter called “My Alphabet; or, How I Am a Letter”, Kristeva describes her childhood in Bulgaria with the public celebrations of Alphabet Day, in honour of two brothers, Cyril and Methodius, creators of the Slavic alphabet. On their shirts, everyone displays a Cyrillic letter. Kristeva writes:
Imprinted in me, the alphabet overtakes me; alphabet is all around me, yet there is neither all nor alphabet: only a euphoric memory, a call to write, unrelated to any literature … I will never forget this first May 24 when I became a letter. (3-4)
Such a lovely birth of a writer, linguist and psychoanalyst! In her chapter on “How to Speak to Literature with Roland Barthes”, Kristeva writes that she wants to speak not of literature, but to literature. It is not about commenting on the substance and form of the work but of questioning the experience of the writer; of showing its singularity, its enunciation. And when commenting on discourse, she writes, inspired by Barthes, that it is about the very plurality of meaning in the work, which is not about interpreting the symbols, but about their polyvalence; not the meaning of the work but rather the empty meaning that supports them all. Kristeva also says that she speaks of literature not as an “object” but as a subjective experience.
How then as a reviewer, to write to this book, and what are my ideas about the singularity and experience it creates? I would say that Passions of Our Time, from the first page to the last, realizes a personal touch including reliance, passion and lo