Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva in Paris, 2008
Born	Юлия Кръстева (1941-06-24) 24 June 1941 (age 75) Sliven, Bulgaria
Residence	France
Nationality	French / Bulgarian
Alma mater	University of Sofia
Spouse(s)	Philippe Sollers
Awards	Holberg International Memorial Prize Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought VIZE 97 Prize
Website	kristeva.fr
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Psychoanalysis Structuralism Poststructuralism
Main interests	Philosophy of language Semiotics Literary criticism Philosophy of literature Psychoanalysis Feminism
Notable ideas	The "semiotic" of the pre-mirror stage Nature of abjection
Influences Mikhail Bakhtin Jacques Lacan Roland Barthes Jacques Derrida Lucien Goldmann Hannah Arendt Georges Bataille

Julia Kristeva (French: [kʁisteva]; Bulgarian: Юлия Кръстева; born 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a professor at the University Paris Diderot.

Kristeva became influential in international critical analysis, cultural studies and feminism after publishing her first book, Semeiotikè, in 1969. Her sizeable body of work includes books and essays which address intertextuality, the semiotic, and abjection, in the fields of linguistics, literary theory and criticism, psychoanalysis, biography and autobiography, political and cultural analysis, art and art history. She is prominent in structuralist and poststructuralist thought.

Kristeva is also the founder and head of the Simone de Beauvoir Prize committee.

Born in Sliven, Bulgaria to Christian parents, Kristeva is the daughter of a church accountant. Kristeva and her sister attended a Francophone school run by Dominican nuns. Kristeva became acquainted with the work of Mikhail Bakhtin at this time in Bulgaria. Kristeva went on to study at the University of Sofia, and while a postgraduate there obtained a research fellowship that enabled her to move to France in December 1965, when she was 24. She continued her education at several French universities, studying under Lucien Goldmann and Roland Barthes, among other scholars. On August 2, 1967, Kristeva married the novelist Philippe Sollers,né Philippe Joyaux.