Concept
Subject in process
Kristeva's name for the speaking subject as never finished or unified, but continually produced and put in question by the interplay of the semiotic and the symbolic. The French en procès means both in process and on trial. The drives that the symbolic order holds down return in language, unsettle the subject's identity and renew it. Against a structuralism that left out the subject, and against a Lacanian subject fixed by its entry into the symbolic, she set out the idea in essays in Tel Quel (1972–73) and in Revolution in Poetic Language (1974).
- Introduced by
- Julia Kristeva
- Key works
- 1
introduced by
- Julia Kristeva 1972 Kristeva introduced the “sujet en procès” in an essay of that title in Tel Quel (nos. 52–53, 1972–73) and developed it in La Révolution du langage poétique (1974), where the subject is both in process and on trial, never fixed by the symbolic order.