‘THE SEMIOTIC PASSION’ – A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO ’S CONSTRUCT OF THE SPEAKING BEING FROM THE ‘THEOLOGIA CRUCIS’

(A Good Friday dialogue)

Balint Gabor Heythrop College, University of London Ph.D 2013

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Abstract of Thesis (500 words):

‘THE SEMIOTIC PASSION’ – A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO JULIA KRISTEVA’S CONSTRUCT OF THE SPEAKING BEING FROM THE ‘THEOLOGIA CRUCIS’

This thesis develops a theological critique of Julia Kristeva’s project of the ‘speaking being. The main purpose of the thesis is to establish the theological context of a secular ‘atheist’ thinker, whose engagement with Christian texts is permanent throughout the oeuvre. The principal aspect of Kristeva’s project is the ‘speaking being’ and her Freudian materialist critique of religion. The thesis argues that Kristeva’s analysis of the ‘speaking being’ discloses itself as the crisis of the ‘exhausted subject’. The crisis of the ‘exhausted subject’ of modernity and post-modernity is the central problem of her work, which is not fully answered by her psychoanalytic regime. Kristeva’s understanding of the ‘speaking being’ leads to an ‘ontic’ exhaustion of the subject, which can only be resolved through a theological engagement, namely, the ‘Semiotic Passion’, which is a comprehensive response from the theology of the cross. The thesis speaks of the ‘semiotic Passion’ because Kristeva’s methodology involves an intertextual and linguistic analysis, and therefore she has to be engaged with on that level. Central to the thesis is also an exploration of the key texts of Kristeva’s work which disclose a ‘mourning’ for the loss of a theological discourse and its potentials, albeit that this is never made explicit.

The thesis identifies the ‘linguistic gap’ (ontological, epistemological, semantic, ideological and methodological), to which the ‘Semiotic Passion’ is presented as a response. By ‘semiotic Passion’ is meant a re-reading of the Passion which aims both to respond to Kristeva in her own terms, and to incorporate her anthropological insights and elements of her own semiotic analysis. It is proposed that the ‘semiotic passion’ allows us to revisit the image of the Father, the regenerative dynamic of divine love, as a necessary completion of Kristeva’s ‘semiotic’ resourcing. The ‘Semiotic Passion’ makes this claim by developing a renewed imagery of the cross, by drawing also on Kristeva’s metaphor of ‘maternal suffering’. The solution that the ‘Semiotic Passion’ offers enters into a critical dialogue with the underlying materialist ontology of Kristeva’s model. It demonstrates that the theologia crucis has sufficient resources for doing this.

The overall concern of the study is to introduce Kristeva’s post-structuralism and her Freudian regime to the domain of systematic theology. At the same time, the other aim of the thesis is to show how Kristeva is an important dialogue partner and resource for theology. Kristeva’s complex Freudian anthropology is necessary for theology if it wants to develop a relationship with culture, which is not locked within apologetics. As a result of this, it becomes possible to develop a theological model of the secular through the image of the ‘Father’, which gives a more thorough understanding of the contemporary subject, which is central both to a theological project as well as to a humanist and a philosophical one. The ‘Semiotic Passion’, being also a theoretical proposal, outlines a core to a Christian anthropological program which can ground such a non-apologetic model of the secular.

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COPYRIGHT DECLARATION1

1. I agree that the thesis presented by me in 2011 for examination for the MPhilStud Degree of the University of London shall, if a degree is awarded, be deposited in the library or electronic institutional repository of Heythrop College and that, subject to the con