Julia Kristeva and I

By Lee Nan-hee

It was almost a few decades ago when I first heard of the name of Julia Kristeva. She is a female philosopher, psychoanalyst and writer in France. She emigrated from the former socialist country of Bulgaria in Eastern Europe. I was quite suspicious how much this female French philosopher's theory would have anything to do with me and other women in South Korea and in Asia. I was surprised to find out how creative and sophisticated her theory and concepts were. Nonetheless, I still doubted how they could be applied to my daily life and our society in Korea.

Some of the reasons why I had an interest in Kristeva originated from even earlier figures than her. They were Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. I wanted to know about their theories and explanations partly due to my personal experiences and characteristics. I had gone through some difficulties in getting along and becoming friendly with various people during my doctoral studies and job performance after by studies. Thus, I wanted to figure out what had gone wrong in my life and what had led to who I was at that time. I tried to read some books and articles on psychoanalysis, and in particular, those on object relations theory. I found them to be very interesting and intriguing. I wanted to delve into them even deeper. Although I did not become an expert on such themes, I felt that I could get much help and insight into understanding my personality from such theories.

In addition, I thought that such theories could be useful and helpful in understanding and reinterpreting human beings in theology. Understanding human beings in theology can be summarized as follows: created by God, modeled in God's image, became a sinner by corruption, saved and justified by believing in Jesus Christ, and further, being in the process of sanctifying with the Holy Spirit.

In particular, with respect to the concept of sin, traditional theology has argued that the strong desire or concupiscence of humans is to blame. For example, John Calvin, the theologian and founder of the Protestant and Presbyterian churches, asserted that human pride and concupiscence are sin, and that the core of Christian life is self-denial. This term, concupiscence, was derived from the term, concupiscentia, in Latin. This term means strong desire, physical or sensual desire or greed. The term is one of three English terms for “epitumia” which appears as many as 38 times in the New Testament.

However, I felt that such understandings of sin obviously lack a meticulous, sophisticated description of the complicated process of how human egos, subjects, psychology and sexual subjects are formed. Thus, that existing, narrow and simple understanding of sin as a strong desire cannot clarify too many things. It is necessary to explain how humans come to constitute the ego and subject in mutual relationships with caregivers (mostly, their mothers), and how humans are supposed to commit sins, which mean nothing but sexual desire.

Dr. Lee Nan-hee (godorchid@gmail.com) studied English and theology at Hanshin University.