Kristeva and Butler: significance, performativity and production as parameters towards a critical semiotics

Abstract

This article proposes a dialogue between Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler’s theories, with the goal of exposing their contributions to a critical semiotics of communication. It indicates, therefore, a series of resonances that seem to connect the distinct projects of both authors in the same post-structuralist vein. In the first section, these resonances are explored through the notions of “discursively conditioned experience”, “signifying practices” and the possibility of a “critical intervention” in communication based on deconstruction. In the second section, the effort is to indicate the centrality and productivity, in both the authors’ thoughts, of the concept of production, which seems to fundament the theories of significance (Kristeva) and performativity (Butler) as critical perspectives towards a micropolitics of communication.

Keywords significance; performativity; productivity; semiotics