Kristeva on Hegel

[Gany]

Thinking about Geigerichs' insistence on Hegel's ideological formula,
and his criticism of Hillman's lack of following the same formula.
Here is a thought-provoking piece about Hegel's dialectic by
Kristeva:


"Kristeva compares her dialectic between semiotic and symbolic to
Hegel's dialectic; but for her, unlike Hegel, there is no synthesis of
the two elements, no Aufhebung (sublation or cancellation with
preservation). In Revolution, she maintains that negativity is not
merely the operator of the dialectic but the forth term of the
dialectic. There, she replaces the Hegelian term 'negativity' with the
psychoanalytic term 'rejection', which adds the connotation of
connection of bodily drives. Because they indicate the drive force in
excess of conscious thought, Kristeva prefers the term 'expenditure'
and 'rejection' "for the movement of material contradictions that
generate the semiotic function". For Kristeva, unlike Hegel,
negativity is never cancelled and the contradiction between the
semiotic and the symbolic is never overcome. While the symbolic
element gives signification its meaning in the strict sense of
reference, the semiotic element gives signification meaning in a
broader sense. That is, the semiotic element makes symbols matter; by
discharging drives in symbols, it makes them significant. Even though
the semiotic challenges meaning in the strict sense, meaning in terms
of the symbolic, it gives symbols their meaning for our lives.
Signification makes our lives meaningful, in both senses of meaning -
signifying something and having significance- through its symbolic and
semiotic elements. The interdependence of the symbolic and semiotic
elements of signification gaurantees a relationship between language
and life, signification and experience; the interdependence between
the symbolic and semiotic guarantees a relationship between body
(soma) and soul (psyche).

[From intro to The Portable Kristeva.]

Kristeva: 'In Hegel, the term Repulsion designates a movement within
negativity that comes close to what we have called 'rejection' yet
does not coincide with it. Repulsion is the negative relation of the
One with itself, as opposed to Becoming, which is "a transition of
Being into Nothing." Since it is the fundamental determination of the
One and its fragmentation, Repulsion both ensures the preservation of
the One and produces the plurality of Ones by the Attraction it
presupposes. Thus we see that Hegelian Repulsion is always subordinate
to Unicity and that, in beginning to act within it, Repulsion calls
Unicity into question only from the outside, by adding multiple
external meanings. There is no doubt, and Hegel himself stresses, that
Repulsion fundamentally interiorizes negativity, in opposition to
Kantian analytics where the "two basic forces remain, within matter,
opposed to one another, external and independent," and where "Kant
determines... repulsive force... as a superficial force, by means of
which parts of matter can act upon one another only at the common
surface of contact." But in internalizing Repulsion within the One
itself and in making Repulsion what specifies, determines, and, in
sum, identifies the One, Hegel Subordinates Repulsion to what we have
called the "symbolic function"; whereas Freud, on the other hand,
joins dialectical logic by making 'expulsion' the essential moment in
the constitution of the symbolic function. The difference is that, in
Freud, what activates expulsion is "another scene" based on the
drives. Since he does not have this heteronomy in view, Hegel can only
supercede the exteriority of Repulsion that Freud has sketched out.
This comes about because separation in Hegel becomes the explanation
of what the One is in itself; it gets exported outside this One, which
is always already constructed, becomes exteriorized, and, as a result
of the dialectic, ends up in exteriority:

[Quoting Hegel]: The self-repulsion of the One is the explication
of that which the One is in itself; but infinity, as split-up, is here
infinity which has passed beyond itself: and this it has done through
the immediacy of the infinite entity, the One. It is a simple relation
of One to One, and equally, or rather, the absolute unrelatedness of
the One; it is the former according to the simple affirmative self-
relation of One, and the latter according to the same as negative. In
other words, the plurality of the One is its self-positing; the One is
its own negative self-relation and nothing else, and this relation
(the One itself) is many Ones. But equally, plurality is merely
external to the One; for the One is the transcending of Otherness,
Repulsion is its self-relation and simple self-identity. The plurality
of Ones is infinity, as contradiction which unconcernedly produces
itself. [end quote]

[Kristeva continues] What Hegel does not envisage is the moment the
One is shattered in a return of Repulsion onto itself, which is to
say, a turning against its own potential power for positing and
multiplying the One. Nor does Hegelian logic see the heterogeneous
parcelling of the symbolic, which underlies the symbolic's very
constitution and constantly undermines it even while maintaining it in
process; the simultaneous existence of the boundary (which is the One)
and the a-reasonable, a-relative, a-mediating crossing of the
boundary; or the possibility of the constitution-unconstitution of One
meaning-nonmeaning, passing through categorical boundaries ("inside",
"one", "multiple", etc), which is precisely what rejection brings
about in the "schizoid" process of the text.

The ideational closure of the Hegelian dialectic seems to consist in
its inability to posit negativity as anything but a repetition of
ideational unity in itself. The exteriority to which it is condemned
in fact is thus bound up with the ideational enclosure, in which,
despite many detours, its trajectory ends. Repeated rejection, far
from purely and simply restoring the series of many Ones, instead
opens up in and through Unity -we are tempted to say beyond
"signifying unity" and "subjective unity"- the material process of
repeated (a-signifying and instinctual) scissions; these repeated
scissions act with the regularity of objective laws and recall,
through the rifts or new arrangements they produce, the pulsation of
that process through symbolic unification. These are the conclusions
we may draw from a materialist interpretation, opened up by the
Freudian position on repetition compulsion.'

[From Kristeva's 'Revolution in Poetic Language']

[Gany]

After reading Kristeva's take on Hegel I can't help but see the
defensive use of Unicity to which everything else gets sucked like to
a black hole. What further comes up is that Geigerichs' application of
the Hegelian formula aims toward something strikingly akin to Jung's
defensive concept "The Self"..... despite conceptual differences. To
me the similarities in Jung and Geigerichs' devotion to Unicity/ies
outweighs the methodological and conceptual differences.

Hillman is a wayfarer..... he dumped The Self in favour of 'soul'. And
we know why.

I'll leave it at that.....

Gany