Semiotic and Symbolic
Julia Kristeva’s notion of the semiotic and symbolic heavily influenced Barthes' theories and as such can lend understanding. According to Kristeva, the semiotic is the ‘real’ individual self that is internally formed from natural desire and physical impulses/drives and thus cannot be cannot be externally articulated- it can only be felt or read through the body. Building upon Lacan, Kristeva notes that the symbolic (or the symbolic order) is the structural system of language that the child enters alongside the transition of Lacan’s mirror stage (1936). Upon recognition of the self as a separate being in its mirror image, the child adopts language as a means to identify the self and the world around it. From this point language suppresses and separates the self from its primal semiotic signification and develops its identity through symbolic signification.
In comparison to Barthes, Kristeva also discusses the power of figurative language to reunite the reader with these semiotic drives. In her book Revolution in Poetic Language (1984) she claims that poetry puts focus upon sound and rhythm that pre-exists language and therefore strips language of its symbolic signification that manufactures ideologies and identity (Oliver,2002). Symbolic signification is thus reversed and the contradiction between the symbolic and the semiotic of the mirror stage is recreated. It is my understanding that poetry creates a pathway, similar to that of Barthes' ‘gap’ or ‘cut’, that enables the reader to fluctuate between the realms of the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’ (conscious and unconscious). This contradiction and fluidity between the symbolic and semiotic is more true to the experience of reality and as such allows the exploration and liberation of the self from realist, readerly representation.
“Poetic language can reactivate the semiotic drive force in language through its sounds and rhythms. Poetic language performs what Kristeva calls a reverse reactivation of the contradiction between semiotic and symbolic” (Oliver,2002,P.24).
Kristeva further elaborates upon the elements of both the semiotic and symbolic elements of language. She defines the symbolic as the ‘pheno- text’ and the semiotic as the ‘geno- text’ (Allen,2004,p:17). The pheno- text corresponds to and underpins that of Barthes readerly, pleasurable text. Whilst the geno-text can be likened to the text of bliss- it delves beneath the superficial surface of language and its constructs to reach the depths of human nature.
“The geno-text is that part of some texts which can be felt through the pheno-text, puncturing, rupturing and disturbing the clear passage of communication” (Allen,2004, p:118).
My analysis will show how Carter effectively contradicts and displays the semiotic and symbolic through the contrasting of The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tiger’s Bride in order to liberate women from the symbolic through the semiotic drives.
Watch the video below for a powerful introduction into Kristeva's Semiotic and Symbolic