International Colloquium
30 Oct - 1 Nov 2009
Institute of Romance Studies at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
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Tomek Kitlinski (Marie Curie University, Lublin, Poland) and
Pawel Leszkowicz (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland)
The Social and Visual Kristeva:
The Kristevan Ideas of Intertextuality, Sublimation and
Confederation of Strangenesses as Tested in Art and Activism
Our aim is to explore the political and visual aspect in Kristeva's
work and reception from a particular gender and queer viewpoint in
Eastern Europe, Kristeva's patrie/matrie. We intend to present how
Kristeva's ideas work in contemporary art and social activism hic et
nunc. What we examine then is the aesthetics and ethics of/following
Julia Kristeva (d'après Julia Kristeva).
From the visual intertext through the diverse codes of love to the
politics of cosmopolitanism - this is the road of Kristeva and of
dissident artists-activists in Eastern Europe who still struggle for
rights of women (abortion in Poland is illegal) and minorities (facing
anti-Semitism and homophobia) here; are they the Kristevan dissidents,
a 'new type of intellectual'? In our countries, we badly need a
confederation of strangenesses which Kristeva imagines in Etrangers à
nous-mêmes and Nations without Nationalism. We discuss the idea and
link it with hospitality, mentioned by Kristeva in the English edition
of La Révolte intime, and compare it with the hostipitality of Jacques
Derrida. Obviously, hospitality appears in the Hebrew Bible, the
Koran, Homer, Kant, Levinas, Klossowski, but Kristeva is very original
here.
For a hospitable confederation of strangenesses, an expérience
(Erlebnis-Erfahrung) of sublimation and intertextuality is crucial.
Art production and reception seems to drive meaning making, that is
thought, which is underlined in the Colloquium text and its very
title. Thinking is at the core of Kristeva's theory: 'For true
dissidence today is perhaps simply what it has always been: thought'.
Thinking is also at the core of art and activism. They are both highly
intertextual - and we will investigate cases of engaged art from
Eastern Europe (Katarzyna Kozyra, Anna Alchuk, Oleg Kulik) in a
sémanalyse of the sublimation of drives and intertextuality of
'absorbing and transforming'. Eastern Europe witnesses new
minoritarian humanities (as opposition to its 'moral majority') which
not only interpret, but also contribute to such an unheimlich
art-activism, such as Poland's lgbtq visibility campaign Let Us Be
Seen (exhibited also in Germany as Sollen sie uns doch sehen) in which
we participated.
Kristeva herself analysed art: from Giotto and Bellini to Georgia
O'Keefe and Louise Bourgeois. She also served on the jury of the
Venice Biennale. In turn, a number of artists and critics have
followed Julia Kristeva: Helen Chadwick constructed an installation
Philoxenia on the eponymous hospitality and the violations of it;
Griselda Pollock has developed Kristeva's ideas in her art and Jewish
studies. The impact of the Bulgarian/French thinker is formidable in
Eastern Europe - not without reservations as ultranationalism is on
the rise here. We used the ideas of Kristeva in Histoires d'amour in
our exhibition Love and Democracy in Poznan and Gdansk. An objective
of our presentation is to probe the Kristevan, un-Kristevan or even
anti-Kristevan body politic of our/her Eastern Europe.
We will compare the Kristevan perspective on and in Eastern Europe to
that of Slavoj Zizek, Renata Salecl and Marina Grzinic, the thinkers
who interpret and inspire art and who remained in their East European
Ljubljana. Kristeva returns here, as she confesses, in dreams and
novels.
As scholars, gay activists and art curators, we would like to realize
the aim of the Colloquium: interdisciplinarity and theoria/praxis,
actualisation/contextualisation link. Ours is an interdisciplinary
project in the humanities: art criticism and political philosophy,
history and contemporaneity of ideas. We would like to have a major
visual component and an additional short image-sound installation
which would take the audience on a tour of our poleis: pays de l'Est
d'après Julia Kristeva.
