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Black Sun
In Black Sun, Julia Kristeva addresses the subject of melancholia, examining this phenomenon in the context of art, literature, philosophy, the history of religion, and culture, as well as psychoanalysis. She describes the depressive as one who perceives the sense of self as a crucial pursuit and a nearly unattainable goal and explains how the love of a lost identity of attachment lies at the very core of depression's dark heart.
In her discussion she analyzes Holbein's controversial 1522 painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb," and has revealing comments on the works of Marguerite Duras, Dostoyevsky and Nerval. Black Sun takes the view that depression is a discourse with a language to be learned, rather than just strictly a pathology to be treated.
In her discussion she analyzes Holbein's controversial 1522 painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb," and has revealing comments on the works of Marguerite Duras, Dostoyevsky and Nerval. Black Sun takes the view that depression is a discourse with a language to be learned, rather than just strictly a pathology to be treated.
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Julia Kristeva
204 books846 followersJulia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her Columbia University Press books include Hatred and Forgiveness (2012); The Severed Head: Capital Visions (2014); and, with Philippe Sollers, Marriage as a Fine Art (2016).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
September 29, 2013
There is a very, very sneaky review quote on the back of this book.
"When Kristeva's new book Black Sun, begins seductively, with an elegant reminder of that old black mood we know so well, she raises hopes that the darker moments of depression will be illuminated . . . [blah blah unrelated sentence]."
What I think the publishers cut out in the ellipses there was ". . . but after that first really good bit the book kind of sucked."
The first bit of the book was indeed great: a poetic evocation of depression. But this only goes to page 68.
Section two is a series of case studies of depressed women who keep dreaming about their mothers having penises, and who have children so they will never be alone. *facepalm*
The rest of the book is close readings of Holbein's Dead Christ and Nerval's poem The Disinherited, an explication of suffering in Doestoyevsky, and the way Dumas used female characters to stand for sadness.
Most of the book just didn't interest me, and it was a struggle to finish it. I kept hoping there would be another good section like the beginning, but it never eventuated. As much as I usually like Kristeva's work, this one I would not recommend.
"When Kristeva's new book Black Sun, begins seductively, with an elegant reminder of that old black mood we know so well, she raises hopes that the darker moments of depression will be illuminated . . . [blah blah unrelated sentence]."
What I think the publishers cut out in the ellipses there was ". . . but after that first really good bit the book kind of sucked."
The first bit of the book was indeed great: a poetic evocation of depression. But this only goes to page 68.
Section two is a series of case studies of depressed women who keep dreaming about their mothers having penises, and who have children so they will never be alone. *facepalm*
The rest of the book is close readings of Holbein's Dead Christ and Nerval's poem The Disinherited, an explication of suffering in Doestoyevsky, and the way Dumas used female characters to stand for sadness.
Most of the book just didn't interest me, and it was a struggle to finish it. I kept hoping there would be another good section like the beginning, but it never eventuated. As much as I usually like Kristeva's work, this one I would not recommend.
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August 9, 2025I remember the winter I stopped feeling . Long time ago. Paris was grey, but not the kind of grey that poets love. It was the kind that swallows you.
I lived near the Canal Saint - Martin, in a small studio with cracked walls and a heater that coughed more than it warmed.
I had just lost someone, he disappeared without a word. And the silence he left behind was louder than any scream..
The canal was always quiet in the mornings. People passed by, as nothing happened..But I wasn't angry, or sad. I was...nothing. That was the worse part. The absence of feeling.
And here is the numbness that Kristeva calls " deadening " - a psychic frost. I couldn't speak, I was sinking, but not drowning. Drowning would have been a kind of relief. This was slower, like being buried alive.
I didn't understand Kristeva at first. Her words are thick, like fog. But something in them mirrored me, back in time. She write of melancholy - not sadness, not grief - but a kind of psychic collapse, a loss of meaning, of the self. She say the melancholic doesn't mourn something they lost. They mourn
something they never fully had. Something that was never named.
I felt that. I couldn't name what I had lost, it wasn't just him. It was a part of me that had vanished. Kristeva say the melancholic is also haunted by an absence, that they carry a corpse inside, not a literal one, but a dead thing - a dead word, a dead feeling, a dead hope. She linked this to language, to the mother, to the primal bond.
She say when that bond is broken, or never formed, the subject collapses, and the world becomes mute, and the sun turns black. And the melancholic, unable to symbolize their pain, turns it inward. They become their own grave.
I read those lines, and felt seen. Not healed, but understood.
Kristeva revealed to me that my emptiness had a name. And that my black sun wasn't madness, it was a form of silent mourning , like that of Meursault. And in that, just like in Meursault's case, strangely, I found a flicker of light. Not hope, not joy. But a kind of dignity to suffer, and to know why.
And Kristeva also spoke of art, something so precious to me. She say the melancholic can turn their pain into creation, to make the black sun visible. That's what I also saw in artists like Nerval, Duras, Artaud. They didn't heal, but they made mourning speak. And I wanted that. Kristeva showed me a way to live with the black sun. Not to banish it, but to let it shine.
I lived near the Canal Saint - Martin, in a small studio with cracked walls and a heater that coughed more than it warmed.
I had just lost someone, he disappeared without a word. And the silence he left behind was louder than any scream..
The canal was always quiet in the mornings. People passed by, as nothing happened..But I wasn't angry, or sad. I was...nothing. That was the worse part. The absence of feeling.
And here is the numbness that Kristeva calls " deadening " - a psychic frost. I couldn't speak, I was sinking, but not drowning. Drowning would have been a kind of relief. This was slower, like being buried alive.
I didn't understand Kristeva at first. Her words are thick, like fog. But something in them mirrored me, back in time. She write of melancholy - not sadness, not grief - but a kind of psychic collapse, a loss of meaning, of the self. She say the melancholic doesn't mourn something they lost. They mourn
something they never fully had. Something that was never named.
I felt that. I couldn't name what I had lost, it wasn't just him. It was a part of me that had vanished. Kristeva say the melancholic is also haunted by an absence, that they carry a corpse inside, not a literal one, but a dead thing - a dead word, a dead feeling, a dead hope. She linked this to language, to the mother, to the primal bond.
She say when that bond is broken, or never formed, the subject collapses, and the world becomes mute, and the sun turns black. And the melancholic, unable to symbolize their pain, turns it inward. They become their own grave.
I read those lines, and felt seen. Not healed, but understood.
Kristeva revealed to me that my emptiness had a name. And that my black sun wasn't madness, it was a form of silent mourning , like that of Meursault. And in that, just like in Meursault's case, strangely, I found a flicker of light. Not hope, not joy. But a kind of dignity to suffer, and to know why.
And Kristeva also spoke of art, something so precious to me. She say the melancholic can turn their pain into creation, to make the black sun visible. That's what I also saw in artists like Nerval, Duras, Artaud. They didn't heal, but they made mourning speak. And I wanted that. Kristeva showed me a way to live with the black sun. Not to banish it, but to let it shine.
May 13, 2011
The first few chapters were very interesting to me. She tries to fuse elements of psychoanalytical theory with cognitive brain science. Although, some elements of her analysis were controversial to me - in essence she is championing pharmaceutical 'cures' to depression. Her work tends to drift in an interesting area in between her professional experience as a practicing psychoanalyst, literally curing people, and literary criticism. Often times, I found this intersection between real psychosis and aesthetic representations of melancholy to have a somewhat universalist, even essentializing tendency that was somewhat disturbing. Notably, she drifts into semiotics, and offering therapeutic suggestions to depressed subjects by talking through and creating 'meaning' in an otherwise 'absurdist' pathology. One of my favorite lines was so simple and brilliant it stuck with me, 'when meaning shatters, nothing else in life matters' - so eloquent. Written in the early 1980's, it marks a transition into Kristeva's Born Again Christian era. While she practically removes all mention of her mentor Roland Barthes, and her intentions are no longer purely revolutionary (as was most of her work in the 60's-70's), this strikes me as a bit reactionary in places. Her views on homoerotic desire are downright fascistic, equating homosexuality with 'cathexis' and unresolves neurosis in the unconscious, seems to me a bit outdated by today's standards (remember, at that time, it was still a new thing not to classify homosexuality as a pathological disorder).
Of course, this book is quite poetic in the earth shatteringly eloquent depiction of despair, depression, and melancholy, and the text is a touchstone for so much of psychonanalysis that it is important to read and reread. Howevr, I can't see a queer theorist or a deconstructionist having much interest in reading this text - except to run circles around it. Too essentialist, too universalist, and it stinks of some of the worse elements of psychoanalysis - and Christianity too, albeit clearly written even by critical theory standards. Coming out of French Theory, which had been dominated by existentialism, deconstruction, and postmodernisms, this was a bit of a departure from the 'breakdown of metanarratives' and 'absurdism' where life has no meaning. In fact, she claims those beliefs are culpable in depressed philosophy (but she obviously never says this directly, one must infer from what her colleagues were doing in France at the time to see who she was speaking out against).
Of course, this book is quite poetic in the earth shatteringly eloquent depiction of despair, depression, and melancholy, and the text is a touchstone for so much of psychonanalysis that it is important to read and reread. Howevr, I can't see a queer theorist or a deconstructionist having much interest in reading this text - except to run circles around it. Too essentialist, too universalist, and it stinks of some of the worse elements of psychoanalysis - and Christianity too, albeit clearly written even by critical theory standards. Coming out of French Theory, which had been dominated by existentialism, deconstruction, and postmodernisms, this was a bit of a departure from the 'breakdown of metanarratives' and 'absurdism' where life has no meaning. In fact, she claims those beliefs are culpable in depressed philosophy (but she obviously never says this directly, one must infer from what her colleagues were doing in France at the time to see who she was speaking out against).
December 1, 2014
Freud of course argued that at least some depressives could have their strange combination of self-deprecation and offended pride explained by the fact that their hatred was not really directed at themselves, but at someone else: the lost object, now incorporated. But he allowed that melancholia could also stem from a real "wounded narcissism"; this is the depression Kristeva pursues here. What is lost is no object, but an unnameable Thing, a vital relationship to language, and meaning itself. Depression, even in its speech patterns, denies the symbolic, but also has subterranean relationships to it, and can nurture all kinds of idealization and imaginary alternatives, as Kristeva shows in various works of art, literature and religion.
Rather than try to fruitlessly "explain" depression, Kristeva shows its discursive ramifications, and points to the extremes where it lies, at the zero limits of affect and symbol, body and language, flirting with psychosis. Depression fills our social reality: what Thing have we lost and why are we unable to work through this loss? The crisis of imagination is patent.
Rather than try to fruitlessly "explain" depression, Kristeva shows its discursive ramifications, and points to the extremes where it lies, at the zero limits of affect and symbol, body and language, flirting with psychosis. Depression fills our social reality: what Thing have we lost and why are we unable to work through this loss? The crisis of imagination is patent.
February 21, 2009
This book did amazing things for me.
October 10, 2019
Kristeva's concept of the depressed/melancholic female being buried inside herself was quite an amazing perspective. She uses Marguerite Duras' Hiroshima Mon Amour like Cathy Caruth and almost completes the analysis that Caruth leaves off. She calls female depression in particular "cannibalistic". I read this for my second examination (I focused on Trauma Theory). Its left a remarkable impression on me. Enough of an impression that when I feel "sad" I go out to do yoga rather than eat my own flesh in some poetic dark corner!
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November 18, 2025cielo santísimo de mi vida. este es uno de los libros más importantes que he leído este año. imposible de resumir
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March 9, 2021As usual, Kristeva writes eloquently, and often brilliantly, about the arts and states of being. As usual, Kristeva gets involved in some truly awful Lacan-flavored semiotic analysis. As usual, she strikes a balance between the two. Some of her points about melancholia were poignant and insightful. Some were blase and patently false. While I have to remind myself of avoiding the genetic fallacy -- just because the origin of an argument is false, does not make it itself essentially false -- the problems inevitably seep in. There are far superior accounts of melancholia out there.
July 9, 2008
This book is really good, but oddly enough it helps to read it when you are depressed - it just makes more sense that way!
August 4, 2014
کتاب را با یک شوقی خریدم (عادت تورق توی مغازه ندارم) بعد دیدم یعنی چی؟ اسم کتاب مشهور کریستوا، مترجم خوبی که سراغ داریم، بعد یک سری مقاله مصاحبه که ربط داره ولی خب ...
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May 27, 2020Tunnen, että en ole tarpeeksi fiksu kirjoittamaan tästä modernista klassikosta. Lukeminen oli vaikeaa ja raskasta, kirja lojui pöydällä viikkoja, ja aina kun ajattelin palaavani siihen, tuli olo että pitäisi lähteä vierittämään siirtolohkaretta ylämäkeen. Silti totesin, että tämä kannattaa käydä läpi. Vastaan tuli kiehtovia lauseita, joita en aina täysin ymmärtänyt, mutta ne tuntuivat tärkeiltä, miettimisen arvoiselta. Tämä on psykoanalyytikon kirja, ja äidistä todella puhuttiin, välillä havahduin että ohhoh, olisiko nyt mennyt jopa muutama sivu ilman että puhutaan äidistä kaiken alkulähteenä, hyvässä ja pahassa. Puurtaminen palkittiin kyllä lopussa, kun pääsin Marguerite Durasin tuotantoa käsittelevään esseeseen. Hiljaisen tuskan kirjoitusta läpikäyvä teksti on itsessään hyvä syy omistaa tämä teos. Toinen hyvä käyttötarkoitus on, että Mustan auringon avulla voi opiskella kuvataide- ja runokriitiikkiä: miten yksityiskohtaisesti teosta voi kuvata, millaisia tunteita siinä nähdä, millaisia vaikuttimia teoksen taustalla havaita. Nämä ovat paljon tieteellisempiä esseitä kuin mihin olen tottunut, mutta Kristevan lähestymistapa kirjoittamiseen on myös vahvasti esteettinen.
”Olemme tuomitut menettämään rakkautemme. Tästä tietoisena saatamme surra vain enemmän kun huomaamme rakastajassamme häivähdyksen kauan sitten menetetystä rakastetusta. Masennus paljastaa Narkissoksen kätketyt kasvot, jotka johtavat kuolemaan, mutta joista hän ei piitannut ihaillessaan itseään kangastuksesta.” (s. 17)
”Kuinka ollakaan, vihan hillitseminen tekee myös mahdolliseksi merkkien hallitsemisen: en hyökkää kimppuusi, minä puhun (tai kirjoitan) oman pelkoni tai tuskani.” (s. 201)
”Kuvan ja sanan kahtiajaossa elokuvan tehtävä on levittää rivoa kauhua tai mielihyvän ulkoisia malleja, kun kirjallisuus kääntyy sisäänpäin ja vetäytyy maailmasta ajattelun kriisin tuloksena.” (s. 248)
”Olemme tuomitut menettämään rakkautemme. Tästä tietoisena saatamme surra vain enemmän kun huomaamme rakastajassamme häivähdyksen kauan sitten menetetystä rakastetusta. Masennus paljastaa Narkissoksen kätketyt kasvot, jotka johtavat kuolemaan, mutta joista hän ei piitannut ihaillessaan itseään kangastuksesta.” (s. 17)
”Kuinka ollakaan, vihan hillitseminen tekee myös mahdolliseksi merkkien hallitsemisen: en hyökkää kimppuusi, minä puhun (tai kirjoitan) oman pelkoni tai tuskani.” (s. 201)
”Kuvan ja sanan kahtiajaossa elokuvan tehtävä on levittää rivoa kauhua tai mielihyvän ulkoisia malleja, kun kirjallisuus kääntyy sisäänpäin ja vetäytyy maailmasta ajattelun kriisin tuloksena.” (s. 248)
December 17, 2025
Decepcionante. Una especie de ejercicio ensimismado de teoría psiconalítica que suena muy pomposo pero no dice nada. Todo esta escrito de la forma más forzada y enrevesada posible y maneja un mamarracheo psiconalítico infumable, lleno de ilusiones fálicas y traumas maternos. En los primeros capítulos, dedicados a plantear la base de su estudio, no he encontrado nada lúcido ni sobre la tristeza ni sobre la melancolía. Y luego, cuando ha llegado a su momento de crítica literaria, he pensado: «¿Realmente me importa lo que pueda opinar esta mamarracha sobre estos autores?», me he dado cuenta de que no y he cerrado el libro.
July 9, 2020
Sol Negro me ha encantado. La verdad es que es que es un recorrido sobre la depresión y la melancolía con un abordaje desde distintas perspectivas y disciplinas, desde el psicoanálisis, hasta la literatura pasando por la religión; me ha resultado verdaderamente interesante. Además de todo esto, una cosa que me ha gustado mucho es la especial atención que Kristeva presta al lenguaje, y la relevancia que le atribuye.
Kristeva no pretende ni de lejos o, al menos, a mí no me lo parece, crear un tratado clínico sino llevar a cabo un abordaje conceptual de la depresión y la melancolía desde distintas perspectivas. Para ello pone en juego la terminología psicoanalítica, así como la exposición de distintos casos que ha visto en terapia, recurre a la literatura o al arte —la obra de Holbein— para tratar de explicar de dónde nace la angustia que provoca la depresión y la melancolía, como se entreteje en la relación con el otro, en la pérdida del objeto amoroso —o no—, en la consciencia de la finitud y del destino mortal del ser humano, en la insuficiencia del lenguaje para expresar, precisamente, todo esto. En este punto, a pesar de su insuficiencia, el lenguaje y la creación literaria se convierten en una especie de catarsis, de vía de escape de la depresión, y en este sentido, creo que se convierte en la propuesta de Kristeva: la palabra, ya sea a través de la transferencia psicoanalítica, o de la creación literaria, se convierte en la forma de enfrentamiento y superación, de toma de consciencia y también, de fuente de frustración. Pero sin embargo, nos hace reconocernos, a nosotros y a los demás, y lo que hay en las entrañas de nuestra existencia.
Mi único desconcierto con el libro es que cuando Kristeva habla de la mujer y de la sexualidad femenina la percibo tendida como en un hilo de ambivalencia. Por una parte, afirma: «la mujer accede a menudo al deseo heterosexual reprimiendo los placeres más arcaicos, hasta el placer mismo: cede a la heterosexualidad en la frigidez»; y, por otra parte, en ocasiones parece no estar demasiado alejada o no ser capaz de desapegarse por completo de la tradición psicoanalítica clásica respecto a este tema. Mi duda —de la que ya no queda casi duda— es hasta que punto, la descripción de la sexaulidad femenina por parte del psicoanálisis no es tanto una descripción como una realidad discursiva que performa.
Ninguna palabra, ningún objeto de la vida es capaz de encontrar un encadenamiento coherente y al mismo tiempo adecuado para un sentido o un referente.
La secuencia arbitraria, tomada por el depresivo como absurda, es coextendida a una pérdida de la referencia. El deprimido no habla de nada, no tiene nada de qué hablar: aglutinado a la Cosa (Res), no tiene objetos. Esta cosa total e imposible de significar es insignificante: es una Nada, su Nada, la Muerte. El abismo que se instala entre el sujeto y los objetos susceptibles de significación se traduce en una imposibilidad de encadenamientos significantes. Pero un exilio semejante revela un abismo en el propio sujeto. Por una parte, los objetos y los significante, denegados en la medida en que están identificados con la vida, toman el valor del sinsentido: ni el lenguaje ni la vida tienen sentido. Por otra parte, a través de la escisión se le atribuye un valor insensato a la Cosa, a Nada: a lo no significaba y a la muerte.
Kristeva no pretende ni de lejos o, al menos, a mí no me lo parece, crear un tratado clínico sino llevar a cabo un abordaje conceptual de la depresión y la melancolía desde distintas perspectivas. Para ello pone en juego la terminología psicoanalítica, así como la exposición de distintos casos que ha visto en terapia, recurre a la literatura o al arte —la obra de Holbein— para tratar de explicar de dónde nace la angustia que provoca la depresión y la melancolía, como se entreteje en la relación con el otro, en la pérdida del objeto amoroso —o no—, en la consciencia de la finitud y del destino mortal del ser humano, en la insuficiencia del lenguaje para expresar, precisamente, todo esto. En este punto, a pesar de su insuficiencia, el lenguaje y la creación literaria se convierten en una especie de catarsis, de vía de escape de la depresión, y en este sentido, creo que se convierte en la propuesta de Kristeva: la palabra, ya sea a través de la transferencia psicoanalítica, o de la creación literaria, se convierte en la forma de enfrentamiento y superación, de toma de consciencia y también, de fuente de frustración. Pero sin embargo, nos hace reconocernos, a nosotros y a los demás, y lo que hay en las entrañas de nuestra existencia.
Mi único desconcierto con el libro es que cuando Kristeva habla de la mujer y de la sexualidad femenina la percibo tendida como en un hilo de ambivalencia. Por una parte, afirma: «la mujer accede a menudo al deseo heterosexual reprimiendo los placeres más arcaicos, hasta el placer mismo: cede a la heterosexualidad en la frigidez»; y, por otra parte, en ocasiones parece no estar demasiado alejada o no ser capaz de desapegarse por completo de la tradición psicoanalítica clásica respecto a este tema. Mi duda —de la que ya no queda casi duda— es hasta que punto, la descripción de la sexaulidad femenina por parte del psicoanálisis no es tanto una descripción como una realidad discursiva que performa.
Ninguna palabra, ningún objeto de la vida es capaz de encontrar un encadenamiento coherente y al mismo tiempo adecuado para un sentido o un referente.
La secuencia arbitraria, tomada por el depresivo como absurda, es coextendida a una pérdida de la referencia. El deprimido no habla de nada, no tiene nada de qué hablar: aglutinado a la Cosa (Res), no tiene objetos. Esta cosa total e imposible de significar es insignificante: es una Nada, su Nada, la Muerte. El abismo que se instala entre el sujeto y los objetos susceptibles de significación se traduce en una imposibilidad de encadenamientos significantes. Pero un exilio semejante revela un abismo en el propio sujeto. Por una parte, los objetos y los significante, denegados en la medida en que están identificados con la vida, toman el valor del sinsentido: ni el lenguaje ni la vida tienen sentido. Por otra parte, a través de la escisión se le atribuye un valor insensato a la Cosa, a Nada: a lo no significaba y a la muerte.
September 10, 2022
Melancholia ends up in asymbolia, in loss of meaning: if I am no longer capable of translating or metaphorizing, I become silent and I die.
July 12, 2025
« La tristesse est l’humeur fondamentale de la dépression » is the new « L’eau est une ressource essentielle à la vie »
des fois on dirait les passions de l’âme sauf qu’on est plus en 1649 dcp c’est vrm gênant
bref heureusement que duras existe a part ça ct chaud
des fois on dirait les passions de l’âme sauf qu’on est plus en 1649 dcp c’est vrm gênant
bref heureusement que duras existe a part ça ct chaud
September 1, 2007
I wrote a term paper on this book, but I still feel I do not understand it fully. Kristeva's discussion of melancholy is very different from Judith Butler's. Kristeva's analysis of Holbein's painting is always inspiring.
August 29, 2019
Intense, troubling; slow going to take it all in: a very therapeutic revelation.
September 17, 2024
Whilst I can’t claim to have grasped every inch of Kristeva’s rich thought - a wicked vortex, articulated with uncompromising erudition and dazzling creativity - i certainly never failed to FEEL it.
This striking affect reached its zenith for me almost immediately, in what has to be one of the most breathtaking essays I have ever read: Psychoanalysis - a counterdepressant.
Depression is painted not as simply a banal extremity of “mood”, an eminently negative disposition jabbing at the walls of the subject’s psychic integrity, but a full-on breakdown in the relationship between the subject and language - the subject and meaning in all its valences.
Seeking refuge from looming catastrophe, the depressive/melancholic cocoons themself in the mercurial infirmity of their precious affect. This apparent safety inherently teeters on the edge of the abyss beyond which lies death and only death.
All in all, likely one of the most convincing and compelling demonstrations of psychoanalytic theory in action you will ever read. My reductive summary simply cannot do it justice. If you check out anything at all here, make it this.
My ardent preoccupation with first essay is not to suggest however, as others have, that the remainder of the text is of remarkably lesser value.
Whilst the second essay does veer into some rather questionable attempts at mingling psychoanalysis with neuroscience, it nonetheless elaborates brilliantly upon the theoretical framework set up in the first essay, especially as concerns the relationship between negation and denial.
The repressed representation, frothing up into consciousness only on condition of its negation, appears to this psychoanalytic neophyte as, if you’ll excuse the hackneyed metaphor, a means for the troubled unconscious to “ease the pressure” under which it suffers.
In this way, perhaps the subject is temporarily satisfied by the negated representation without having to be made painfully aware of the traumatic “truth” still haunting the unconscious.
If the signifier’s negation is a necessary procedure for the maintenance of the subject’s relationship with the world of signs, then denial of this negated signifier can only drive the subject into the abyss of asymbolia, wherein one can only retreat from language - a position of narcissistic emptiness, a desperate attempt to exert “omnipotence” over the unnameable, mourned “Thing”.
Demonstrating the explanatory and analytical power of this framework (which i have only very loosely and incompletely outlined) with enviable insight, Kristeva goes on to place a small number of artworks and artists (from Dostoevsky to Nerval to Duras) under the psychoanalytic/philosophical microscope. These musings and investigations range from enlightening to mildly perplexing, as Kristeva takes every implication, every gesture, to its interpretive limit.
Even when her arguments and suggestions fail to truly stick the landing, they never fail to embody untrammled ambition and electrifying originality.
To put it bluntly, its shit like this that gets me going when it comes to theory. Very much looking forward to revisiting it (especially the first essay and the one on Holbein). Properly engaging stuff.
This striking affect reached its zenith for me almost immediately, in what has to be one of the most breathtaking essays I have ever read: Psychoanalysis - a counterdepressant.
Depression is painted not as simply a banal extremity of “mood”, an eminently negative disposition jabbing at the walls of the subject’s psychic integrity, but a full-on breakdown in the relationship between the subject and language - the subject and meaning in all its valences.
Seeking refuge from looming catastrophe, the depressive/melancholic cocoons themself in the mercurial infirmity of their precious affect. This apparent safety inherently teeters on the edge of the abyss beyond which lies death and only death.
All in all, likely one of the most convincing and compelling demonstrations of psychoanalytic theory in action you will ever read. My reductive summary simply cannot do it justice. If you check out anything at all here, make it this.
My ardent preoccupation with first essay is not to suggest however, as others have, that the remainder of the text is of remarkably lesser value.
Whilst the second essay does veer into some rather questionable attempts at mingling psychoanalysis with neuroscience, it nonetheless elaborates brilliantly upon the theoretical framework set up in the first essay, especially as concerns the relationship between negation and denial.
The repressed representation, frothing up into consciousness only on condition of its negation, appears to this psychoanalytic neophyte as, if you’ll excuse the hackneyed metaphor, a means for the troubled unconscious to “ease the pressure” under which it suffers.
In this way, perhaps the subject is temporarily satisfied by the negated representation without having to be made painfully aware of the traumatic “truth” still haunting the unconscious.
If the signifier’s negation is a necessary procedure for the maintenance of the subject’s relationship with the world of signs, then denial of this negated signifier can only drive the subject into the abyss of asymbolia, wherein one can only retreat from language - a position of narcissistic emptiness, a desperate attempt to exert “omnipotence” over the unnameable, mourned “Thing”.
Demonstrating the explanatory and analytical power of this framework (which i have only very loosely and incompletely outlined) with enviable insight, Kristeva goes on to place a small number of artworks and artists (from Dostoevsky to Nerval to Duras) under the psychoanalytic/philosophical microscope. These musings and investigations range from enlightening to mildly perplexing, as Kristeva takes every implication, every gesture, to its interpretive limit.
Even when her arguments and suggestions fail to truly stick the landing, they never fail to embody untrammled ambition and electrifying originality.
To put it bluntly, its shit like this that gets me going when it comes to theory. Very much looking forward to revisiting it (especially the first essay and the one on Holbein). Properly engaging stuff.
February 28, 2021
1. Psychoanalsis—A Counterdepressant
2. Life and Death of Speech
3. Illustrations of Feminine Depression
Cannibalistic Solitude
To Kill or to Kill Oneself:
The Enacted Wrongdoing
A Virgin Mother
4. Beauty: The Depressive's Other Realm
5. Holbein's Dead Christ
6. Gérard de Nerval, the Disinherited Poet
7. Dostoyevsky, the Writing of Suffering,
and Forgiveness.
8. The Malady of Grief: Duras
"Naming suffering, exalting it, dissecting it into its smallest components—that is doubtless a way to curb mourning. To revel in it at times, but also to go beyond it, moving on to another form, not so scorching, more and more perfunctory . . . Nevertheless, art seems to point to a few devices that bypass complacency and, without simply turning into mania, secure for the artist and the connoisseur a sublimatory hold over the lost Thing. First by means of prosody, the language beyond language that inserts into the sign the rhythm and alliterations of semiotic process. Also by means of the polyvalence of sign and symbol, which unsettles naming and, by building up a plurality of connotations around the sign, affords the subject a chance to imagine the nonmeaning, or the true meaning, of the Thing. Finally by means of the psychic organization of forgiveness: identification of the speaker with a welcoming, kindly ideal, capable of removing the guilt from revenge, or humiliation from narcissistic wound, which underlines depressed people's despair.
Can the beautiful be sad? Is beauty inseparable from the ephemeral and hence from mournng? Or else is the beautiful object the one that tirelessly returns following destructions and wars in order to bear witness that there is survival after death, that immortality is possible?"
September 29, 2023
as with the only critical theory worth its weight, BLACK SUN has the alchemizing quality of turning the sensual and undefinable phenomena that make up reality into a set of tangible, definite truths that feel almost consecrated to uncover. i found this inspiring and heart shaking to the degree that i was often trembling, on the verge of tears and clasping a hand to my mouth in disbelief as kristeva reveals the world as you’ve always known it but been heretofore incapable of describing in words.
it probably helps that i happened to read this at the deepest and most profound state of misery i’ve endured in my short life. with empathy and harshness at once, kristeva describes melancholia as an affected psychic performance of grief as to subsume a longed for object into one’s own being. by graphically mourning that which is lost, one can enshrine it within the most fundamental essences of their speech and soul... and from this foundation, the entire artistic gyre of life on earth and the meaning of sorrow emerges. the way i see the world has changed
i filled up eight pages of my little muji notebook writing down the quotes and passages that gave me pause, there's too much to highlight here. but here's one thing that keeps rattling around in me:
"on the edge of silence, the word 'nothing' emerges."
it probably helps that i happened to read this at the deepest and most profound state of misery i’ve endured in my short life. with empathy and harshness at once, kristeva describes melancholia as an affected psychic performance of grief as to subsume a longed for object into one’s own being. by graphically mourning that which is lost, one can enshrine it within the most fundamental essences of their speech and soul... and from this foundation, the entire artistic gyre of life on earth and the meaning of sorrow emerges. the way i see the world has changed
i filled up eight pages of my little muji notebook writing down the quotes and passages that gave me pause, there's too much to highlight here. but here's one thing that keeps rattling around in me:
"on the edge of silence, the word 'nothing' emerges."
November 28, 2023
Kristevan teksti on sekä sivistävää, haastavaa että inhimillisesti koskettavaa. Toki se on myös psykoanalyysia hyödyntävää, eli suhtaudun siihen osin kuin runouteen. Kirjan eri osiot/esseet erottuivat toisistaan kiinnostavasti myös tyylillisesti, ikään kuin teos sisältäisi monta eri kirjaa.
August 17, 2025
A bit too unfocused for my liking, but when it is on topic it is very good. Kristeva the Stylist is just as compelling to me as Kristeva the Psychoanalyst (though I’ve never read any of her fiction — I should rectify this). Melancholy, as an affectation, stemming from the rejection of the signifier is a solid broadening of Freud’s concept of Verleugnung, and the 60ish pages focusing on this and the depressive signifier / pain’s psychic representations are what I was looking for. The sections on de Nerval and Duras and Dostoevsky are fine but feels like padding out the length here a bit
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September 11, 2025Depression är alltså inte farligt, bara ett stilgrepp!
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December 1, 2023su lectura de El arrebato de Lol V. Stein es tan autosugestionada..... like girl
June 3, 2017
Going back and forth here. I read this book--skimmed it, rather--when it came out and was impressed, intrigued, as I generally am with Kristeva. But I read through it more seriously last year and again this year and find it facile and a little misogynistic. She is better on the same subject elsewhere…. Now I pick it up again and review the chapter on Holbein, which is fantastic, in which she links melancholia to the protestant reformation. Back up to a 3. Still for thinking about the history of thinking about melancholia, I prefer (vastly) The Gendering of Melancholia by Juliana Schiesari (who is no fan of Kristeva).
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April 5, 2018I was very enthusiastic about this book when I first read about it and now that I finished it, unfortunately, I can't say the same. The problem is that it was not quite insightful as I'd expected from such a bright intellectual like Kristeva. I prefer listening to her interviews much more than reading her written work. There she comes off as a more articulate and profound thinker. I recommend reading Emil Cioran instead for a more in-depth analysis (not psychoanalysis but philosophical problematization).
November 18, 2019
This one was a bit more academic then I had anticipated. Clearly it's a scholarly work that requires of the reader a more than passing knowledge of linguistic based psychotherapy. And I don't have that. But there was enough I was able to understand without my eyes crossing together, and the section on Dostoevsky was pretty fascinating (but also requires that material to be fairly fresh on the mind). Basically this is some deep stuff and only truly rewarding for someone already familiar with this school of thought.
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August 2, 2016this book is exciting
November 23, 2018
Is a emotional book I loved
August 26, 2024
annotations:
-Where does this black sun come from? Out of what eerie galaxy do its invisible, lethargic rays reach me, pinning me down to the ground, to my bed, compelling me to silence, to renunciation?
-On the frontiers of life and death, occasionally I have the arrogant feeling of being witness to the meaninglessness of Being, of revealing the absurdity of bonds and beings.
-I live it as a wound or deprivation, discovering just the same that my grief is but the deferment of the hatred or desire for ascendency that I nurture with respect to the one who betrayed or abandoned me.
-Christian theology, on the other hand, considered sadness as a sin.
-I shall try to bring out, from the core of the melancholy/depressive composite, blurred as its borders may be, what pertains to a common experience of object loss and of a modification of signifying bonds.
-the depressive affect makes up for symbolic invalidation and interruption (the depressive's "that's meaningless") and at the same time protects it against proceeding to the suicidal act.
*-Thus moods are inscriptions, energy disruptions, and not simply raw energies.
-The retardation or inactivity, which one might call depressive, would thus constitute a learned defense reaction to a dead-end situation and unavoidable shocks.
-Sadness would thus be the negative of omnipotence, the first and primary indication that the other is getting away from me, but that the self, nevertheless, does not put up with being abandoned.
-being as if she were dead, playing dead seemed for Helen when she could talk about it, therefore after the event, like a "poetics" of survival, an inverted life, coiled around imaginary and real disintegration to the extent of embodying death as if it were real.
-Marie-Ange's violence endows her with a phallic power that makes up for humiliation and, even more so, gives her the feeling of being more powerful than her husband-more authoritative, so to speak, over his mistress' body.
-Loss of the erotic object (unfaithfulness or desertion by the lover or husband, divorce, etc) is felt by the woman as an assault on her genitality and, from that point of view, amounts to castration. At once, such a castration starts resonating with the threat of destruction of the body's integrity, the body image, and the entire psychic system as well... Even though a woman has no penis to lose, it is her entire being-body and especially soul-that she feels is threated by castration.
-Look: who is happy in the world and what kind of people consent to live? - precisely those who are akin to animals and come nearest to their species by reason of their limited development and consciousness.
-Forgiveness does not cleanse actions. It raises the unconscious form beneath the actions and has it meet a loving other-an other who does not judge but hears my truth in the availability of love, and for that very reason allows me to be reborn.
-"The purpose of love is to die more comfortable into life."
-"We joke and believe death to be far removed. It is hidden in the deepest secrets of our organs. For since the moment you came into this world, life and death go forward at the same pace."
-Where does this black sun come from? Out of what eerie galaxy do its invisible, lethargic rays reach me, pinning me down to the ground, to my bed, compelling me to silence, to renunciation?
-On the frontiers of life and death, occasionally I have the arrogant feeling of being witness to the meaninglessness of Being, of revealing the absurdity of bonds and beings.
-I live it as a wound or deprivation, discovering just the same that my grief is but the deferment of the hatred or desire for ascendency that I nurture with respect to the one who betrayed or abandoned me.
-Christian theology, on the other hand, considered sadness as a sin.
-I shall try to bring out, from the core of the melancholy/depressive composite, blurred as its borders may be, what pertains to a common experience of object loss and of a modification of signifying bonds.
-the depressive affect makes up for symbolic invalidation and interruption (the depressive's "that's meaningless") and at the same time protects it against proceeding to the suicidal act.
*-Thus moods are inscriptions, energy disruptions, and not simply raw energies.
-The retardation or inactivity, which one might call depressive, would thus constitute a learned defense reaction to a dead-end situation and unavoidable shocks.
-Sadness would thus be the negative of omnipotence, the first and primary indication that the other is getting away from me, but that the self, nevertheless, does not put up with being abandoned.
-being as if she were dead, playing dead seemed for Helen when she could talk about it, therefore after the event, like a "poetics" of survival, an inverted life, coiled around imaginary and real disintegration to the extent of embodying death as if it were real.
-Marie-Ange's violence endows her with a phallic power that makes up for humiliation and, even more so, gives her the feeling of being more powerful than her husband-more authoritative, so to speak, over his mistress' body.
-Loss of the erotic object (unfaithfulness or desertion by the lover or husband, divorce, etc) is felt by the woman as an assault on her genitality and, from that point of view, amounts to castration. At once, such a castration starts resonating with the threat of destruction of the body's integrity, the body image, and the entire psychic system as well... Even though a woman has no penis to lose, it is her entire being-body and especially soul-that she feels is threated by castration.
-Look: who is happy in the world and what kind of people consent to live? - precisely those who are akin to animals and come nearest to their species by reason of their limited development and consciousness.
-Forgiveness does not cleanse actions. It raises the unconscious form beneath the actions and has it meet a loving other-an other who does not judge but hears my truth in the availability of love, and for that very reason allows me to be reborn.
-"The purpose of love is to die more comfortable into life."
-"We joke and believe death to be far removed. It is hidden in the deepest secrets of our organs. For since the moment you came into this world, life and death go forward at the same pace."
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