The predominance of patriarchally-based structures in Kristeva’s work sets up an uncomfortable dichotomy for feminist critics. Her 1979 essay ‘Le temps des femmes’ (translated as ‘Women’s Time’ in 1981) most explicitly articulates her own approach to feminism, addressing women’s troubled relationship to patriarchy in terms of time and space. Kristeva identifies three distinct positions in femin...

The year is 1961. Michel Foucault has just published what would later become one of the most influential books of the postwar era, Histoire de la folie a I'age classique (Madness and Ciuilization). Foucault was accompanied by several contemporary thinkers many of whom are now household namesDeleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Harraway, Debord, Jameson and others. In thei...