She is now famous for the distinction between what she calls the "semiotic" and the "symbolic," which she develops in her early work including Revolution in Poetic Language , "From One Identity to the Other" in Desire in Language, and Powers of Horror. Kristeva maintains that all signification is composed of these two elements. The semiotic element is the bodily drive as it is discharged in signification. The semiotic is associated with the rhythms, tones, and movement of signifying practices. As the discharge of drives, it is also associated with the maternal body, the first source of rhythms, tones, and movements for every human being since we all have resided in that body.
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Kristeva.html
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture @Virginia Tech
Read carefully. Too quick a jump to the maternal association skips over the social & other associations with "rhythms, tones, and movement of signifying practices." Marking a "first source" is like counting with natural numbers. The set of whole numbers brings to mind an origin beyond the source: the rain that feeds the spring. There is some laughter around the bend.
And so for day 541
06.06.2008