Julia Kristeva at 85: a line of thought from abjection to intertextuality

Julia Kristeva turned 85 on 24 June 2026. According to the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, Kristeva — psychoanalyst, linguist, semiotician, literary theorist and novelist — visited Bulgaria in May.

The road to Paris#

Born in Bulgaria in 1941, Kristeva went to Paris on a doctoral scholarship in 1965 and never returned. She became a student of Roland Barthes, joined the Tel Quel circle and moved quickly to the centre of French theory.

Intertextuality#

Her most durable early contribution is the concept of intertextuality. Starting from Mikhail Bakhtin's idea of dialogism, she argued that no text stands alone: every text is a transformation of other texts. The term is now standard in literary theory.

The semiotic and the symbolic#

In Revolution in Poetic Language (1974) she divided language into two layers:

• The symbolic: grammar, syntax, social rule — the ordered part of language.
• The semiotic: rhythm, intonation, rupture, repetition of sound — the bodily layer that precedes meaning.

Poetry, for Kristeva, is where the semiotic presses against the symbolic order. The distinction reconstructs the relation between language and the body by way of psychoanalysis.

Abjection#

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980) set out the concept that has resonated most widely: abjection. The abject is neither subject nor object; it is what breaks the boundary — the corpse, vomit, blood. The self, on Kristeva's account, constitutes itself by expelling these things; but what is expelled never quite disappears.

The concept has been used across literary criticism, horror cinema, analyses of nationalism and theories of the body.

Recognition#

Kristeva has received the Holberg Prize (2004) and the Hannah Arendt Prize (2006) among other honours, and is professor emerita at Université Paris Cité.