Page 85 - Critical and Cultural Theory

LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION
of states of uncertainty. In challenging the solidity of our textual
frames, the abject reminds us that the possibility of loss looms
large over our lives. However, living with loss - and at a loss - is
not a condition of utter despair. In fact, loss is often at the root of
our most imaginative efforts: the acknowledgment of our self-
division and incompleteness encourages us to go on constantly
redefining our textual selves and this process is immensely
creative. Indeed, it is comparable to artistic production.
In Black Sun, Kristeva actually argues that a powerful means of
giving the experience of loss a form is art. This works on two
levels. On the one hand, the creation of texts is a means of
plugging (albeit tentatively) the holes that riddle our lives. On the
other, it can help us come to terms with loss by enabling us to
relive it again and again. In the construction of texts, we are
productive but simultaneously drain our bodies and minds. Thus,
artistic creation is a way of re-experiencing the initial drama of
loss from which all subjectivity stems. The inability to come to
terms with loss would result in melancholia or depression -
namely, conditions that challenge the symbolic by rejecting
socially approved forms of expression and communication but
also impair our ability to relate to others (Kristeva 1989). By
contrast with melancholia and depression, love is posited as a
means of forging intersubjective relations. Like Barthes, Kristeva
rejects the popular tendency to domesticate love by turning it into
a love story with a beginning, a middle and an end. There is
nothing challenging or thought-provoking about such a narrative.
It is just a way of making sense of love, of transforming its fluid
nature into a neat parcel of more or less stereotypical meanings.
Genuine love, according to Kristeva, is porous: it means openness
to the other and an ability to dissolve the boundaries of the indivi-
dual self (Kristeva 1987).
The text's erotic import is likewise related to themes of
openness, separation and loss. As we have seen, Barthes argues
that texts come across as most intensely physical and sexual when
they gape - i.e. reveal their gaps and fissures, their divided charac-
ter, what is lost to them. Kristeva's subject is one such text. In her
writings, people and stories become virtually interchangeable in
virtue of their common nature. Neither the text nor the self can be
anchored: both unfold and branch off in disparate directions and
with no obvious destinations: 'The advantage of life (or a story) in

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