Julia Kristeva

Kristeva on the Symbolic and the Semiotic elements of signification Semiotic elements: the drives as they discharge into language, associated with rhythm and tone, subterranean element of meaning that doesn't signify Symbolic elements: that which signifies, associated with syntax and grammar Semiotic gives rise and challenges the symbolic. Without the symbolic we have only delirium or nature. Without the semiotic, language would be completely empty, if not impossible. We would have no reason to speak …

…fetish*, an effort to cover over the lack inherent in our relation to death, materiality, and the abject. *Fetishism is the displacement of desire and fantasy onto alternative objects or body parts (eg. a foot fetish or a shoe fetish), in order to obviate a subject's confrontation with the castration complex. Kristeva goes so far as to associate all language with fetishism, seeing the fetish as a life preserver, temporary and slippery, but nonetheless indispensable.