In Deference to the Other: Lonergan and Contemporary Continental Thought

5. Kristeva’s Horror and Lonergan’s Insight: The Psychic Structure of the Human Person and the Move to a Higher Viewpoint

Chapter 5 Kristeva’s Horror and Lonergan’s Insight The Psychic Structure of the Human Person and the Move to a Higher Viewpoint CHRISTINE E. JAMIESON T he emergence of women in the public realm signifies important progress for humanity. Multiple historical factors played significant roles in fostering this progress.1 Paradoxically, an outcome of this progress is the greater availability of evidence of violence and dehumanizing treatment of women. This evidence indicates that despite important advancement for women, misogynous behavior has not abated and may, in fact, be escalating.2 Juxtaposing humanity’s progress and decline in relation to women leads one to wonder about the relationship between the two. The growing presence of women in the public realm and a worsening of the bias of misogyny suggest a lacuna regarding attempts to promote the former and abolish the latter. Psychoanalyst and linguist Julia Kristeva (1941– ) explores a pattern within the psychic structure of the speaking subject which sheds significant light on this lacuna. However, Kristeva’s work has been criticized as being either essentialist and ahistorical or deterministic which, according to her critics, makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, for women to escape an oppressed and determined existence.3 Kristeva elicits an understanding of the human psyche that reveals the underlying dialectical condition of the speaking subject. For Kristeva, there is a link between this dialectical condition and the marginalization and oppression of women. This is what is meant in the title of this chapter by “Kristeva’s Horror.”4 It is horrifying because it pushes us to the 91 limits of our condition as speaking subjects. For Kristeva, there is an inherent structure within the psyches of speaking subjects that facilitates the repression—indeed, the abjection5 of women. This insight facilitates our understanding of the lacuna that exists when attempting to explain the persistent tension between humanity’s progress and decline in relation to women. While Kristeva pushes us to the limits of our condition as speaking subjects, Bernard Lonergan provides an insight that one might draw on to channel Kristeva’s horror into liberation. The insight I am referring to is Lonergan’s recognition of the emergence of a higher viewpoint when confronted with the limits of intelligible horizons. In drawing on this insight, Lonergan might help one to grasp why Kristeva’s thought is determining yet liberating. The human desire to understand facilitates development beyond the limits of horizons. Although Kristeva confronts us with a seemingly inescapable human condition, one might draw on Lonergan to move beyond the limits of that condition.6 Kristeva provides an understanding that pushes our thinking concerning women’s rights to a deeper level. By linking her penetrating analysis with Lonergan’s insights, one can begin to understand the paradoxical experience of determinism and liberation when confronted with Kristeva’s work. Lonergan’s insight concerning the need to shift to a higher viewpoint when confronted with an experience (liberation within a determined horizon) which cannot be explained within the range of the present intelligible horizon provides the necessary heuristic to assist us in beginning to formulate what that higher viewpoint might be. In what follows, I will sketch Kristeva’s theory of what she terms the “split subject” and follow this with a few remarks on how Lonergan might assist us in grasping the full import of Kristeva’s contribution concerning the further progress of women. The Split Subject In describing the experience of the human person, Julia Kristeva unearths a deep, pervasive dialectic7 that constitutes the foundation of the “speaking subject.” This dialectical condition of speaking human beings has roots in the initial relationship between mothers and infants. In order for an infant to achieve an identity, a separation process must take place. The child and the mother must separate. Separation in fact begins at the origins of the human person. Consequently, Kristeva posits a dialectic at the very foundations of the human person. What is this dialectic? 92 In Deference to the Other Kristeva refers to two processes within the human person, the semiotic process and the symbolic process. The mature human person embodies these two processes. The dialectic between them produces the speaking subject. Kristeva equates the semiotic process with the infantile experience that is pre-subject/object, before the child differentiates between itself and its mother. The semiotic is identified with the instincts, drives, and needs which, in the beginning, prior to development in conjunction...