Julia Kristeva, Julia Kristeva Interviews. Ross Mitchell Guberman, ed. New York:  Columbia UP, 1996.

When we think of Julia Kristeva, we think of a number of far-reaching studies—investigations of language, identity, and culture that combine to form a rich and complex oeuvre. While we may find illuminating any one strand of this theoretical fabric, it is perhaps most edifying to take Kristeva's work as a whole, in order that we may best consider her complex balance of interdisciplinary concerns. In his recent collection of Kristeva's interviews, Ross Mitchell Guberman gives us the opportunity to do just that, in a space that affords us, additionally, a fresh perspective on this theorist's personal and intellectual development. The twenty-three interviews Guberman has selected span twenty years of Kristeva's career, and the seven chapters into which he divides them address the various facets of her life and theory. In some cases, this attempt at comprehensiveness may leave the reader feeling shortchanged: each of the book's major sections contains only three or four interviews, which tend, moreover, to be rather spotty in terms of informative content. Because of this scant treatment of individual subjects, the pieces in the collection are perhaps less enlightening than other, more detailed writings by Kristeva. In this sense I would disagree with Guberman's introductory assertion that those new to Kristeva's work will find the book a useful entrée to her theory. On the other hand, for readers already familiar with Kristeva, the edition provides a thought-provoking overview of her ideas, as well as a rare look at how those ideas have been shaped and honed by biographical events.

These events serve as a springboard for the topics of the book's first section, “Profiles,” in which Kristeva discusses, among other things, the intellectual climate of Europe while she completed her education in France—an experience she counts as crucial to her formation of the sujet-en-procès. This first chapter is somewhat of a grab bag of Kristevan viewpoints, and as such it has less of a