Review: 'Dostoyevsky, or The Flood of Language' by Julia Kristeva, trans. by Jody Gladding
Pub. Date: 28/12/2021
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Growing up in Bulgaria, Julia Kristeva was warned by her father not to read Dostoyevsky. “Of course, and as usual,” she recalls, “I disobeyed paternal orders and plunged into Dosto. Dazzled, overwhelmed, engulfed.” Kristeva would go on to become one of the most important figures in European intellectual life—and she would return over and over again to Dostoyevsky, still haunted and enraptured by the force of his writing.
In this book, Kristeva embarks on a wide-ranging and stimulating inquiry into Dostoyevsky’s work and the profound ways it has influenced her own thinking. Reading across his major novels and shorter works, Kristeva offers incandescent insights into the potent themes that draw her back to the Russian master: God, otherness, violence, eroticism, the mother, the father, language itself. Both personal and erudite, the book intermingles Kristeva’s analysis with her recollections of Dostoyevsky’s significance in different intellectual moments—the rediscovery of Bakhtin in the Thaw-era Eastern Bloc, the debates over poststructuralism in 1960s France, and today’s arguments about whether it can be said that “everything is permitted.” Brilliant and vivid, this is an essential book for admirers of both Kristeva and Dostoyevsky. It also features an illuminating foreword by Rowan Williams that reflects on the significance of Kristeva’s reading of Dostoyevsky for his own understanding of religious writing.
I first encountered Julia Kristeva's work when I was writing my MA thesis on psychoanalytic archetypes in film adaptions of medieval work. I had sunk so far into Freud and Jung that I was losing some perspective. While their work is fascinating, much of it is also very dated, especially when we consider how much our understanding of gender and sex has developed. With Kristeva, however, I found a useful concept, namely the 'abject'. The abject is how we respond to things that threaten how we understand the world around us, the things that do not respect boundaries or easy categorisation. This applies, for example, to a dead body, which at once seems human and yet so clearly isn't a person anymore. Another example is the skin that forms on warm milk, which makes many, myself included, feel incredibly icky. The abject also applies, in some ways, to responses to the female body, especially the maternal body, and everything that emerges from it. For more on the abject, see Kristeva's Powers of Horror! I have very much enjoyed working with this concept because it feels applicable and recognisable. There is a lot about psychoanalysis, however, that I can do nothing with. It threatens to become very abstract and to rely largely on impressions, the connecting of various things without, in my opinion, tangible links. I am not helped by my own academic background here, as I am expected to use a lot of nuance and clarification, evidence, etc., even while working in the humanities. The looseness of some of what I read in The Flood of Language therefore was not something I could connect with.
Dostoyevsky, or The Flood of Language is an investigation of Dostoyevsky's work, articulated through Kristeva's own experiences reading him. The book therefore is partly a personal, almost ethnographic, approach to the literature, and yet also a deep dive into the literature itself. A big emphasis is the notion of language, especially as Dostoyevsky's writing has been noted for its multiplicity of voices. I believe that Kristeva explores the ways in which characters articulate themselves, try to make themselves understood, and usually fail to do so. Another big theme is religion, as Dostoyevsky was deeply Orthodox. There is a darkness to a lot of his writing, to the battles raging inside his characters, which can, I think, be difficult for many readers to approach. (Warning: the book does therefore deal with difficult topics such as abuse and rape.) Appreciating the role of religion can, perhaps, help in this. Kristeva also dedicates some chapters to the female characters in Dostoyevsky's novels, how they are seemingly not granted the same 'opportunity to construct themselves' outside of being the men's Other. I found these chapters very intriguing, but they were also full of psychoanalytical arguments I am not a fan of. Overall, The Flood of Language is an interesting insight into how Kristeva approaches and understands Dostoyevsky. Approaching it from that angle, it was a very interesting read. If I had approached it as something which was meant to aid my own understanding of Dostoyevsky, I probably would have merely gotten more questions than answers.
Kristeva is a semiotician and a psychoanalyst and a lot of her writing reflects those fields. She plays with language, with symbolism, with deeper meanings, and relies deeply on ideas of the pre-Oedipal and other Freudian conceptions. I have already noted some of my skepticisms regarding him and the field of psychoanalysis above and they do also affect my reading experience of Kristeva's writing. It is not that I think psychoanalysis, or psychoanalytic readings of literature, are not useful. They absolutely have their place within our understanding of culture and literature. I am a little tired, however, of everything being phallic, or a threat to the ego, etc. On top of that, the fields of psychoanalysis and cultural studies also enjoy using a lot of complex words. For example, 'disobjectalize' is a word I do not understand, which Kristeva uses. Not knowing the language she uses makes it very difficult to understand what kind of argument she is building up to. If I experience this, working in academia, I doubt the book is very accessible to other audiences. A book does not need to cater to all audiences, of course, and for those intrigued by theme and topic, The Flood of Language will have a lot to offer. But take your time with it. I would also like to note that Jody Gladding does an excellent job translating the book from the French!
I give this book...
3 Universes!
Dostoyevsky, or The Flood of Language was a very interesting read, even if at times baffling or complicated. Kristeva writes intriguingly, and the novel is a lovely depiction of her personal experiences with Dostoyevsky.
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