At the Limits of Discourse: Heterogeneity, Alterity, and the Maternal Body in Kristeva's Thought

This essay situates Kristeva's theory of semiotics in the context of the controversial debate about the status of the maternal body in her work. I argue that, if we rethink the opposition between the semiotic and the symbolic as the relation between the trace and the sign, it becomes clear that the maternal semiotic is irreducible either to the prelinguistic plenitude or to the alternative symbolic position. The second part of the essay develops the connection between Kristeva's linguistic theory and the alterity of the maternal body, articulated here as the in-fold of the other and the same.