Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva turns her famed critical eye to a study of the human head as symbol and metaphor, as religious object and physical fact, further developing a critical theme in her work--the power of horror--and expanding the potential for the face to provide an experience of the sacred. Kristeva's study stretches far back in time to 6,000 B.C.E. with humans' early decoration and worship of skulls, and follows with an examination of the Medusa myth; the mandylion of Laon (a holy relic in which the face of a saint appears on a piece of cloth); the biblical stories of John the Baptist and Salome; tales of the guillotine; modern murder mysteries; and the rhetoric surrounding the fight for and against capital punishment. Drawing numerous connections between these "capital visions" and their experience, Kristeva affirms the possibility of the sacred, even in an era of "faceless" interaction.

Capital Visions

The Severed Head

Lily

A psychoanalytical reflection on the depiction of severed heads in ancient through modern art and how such representations of the skull both evoke and sublimate our fear of death. This is an interesting book, particularly if one is generally familiar with the psychoanalytical lens that Kristeva applies, but nonetheless it is not too hard to follow. There are some fascinating observations and interpretations; For example, in the fourth chapter Kristeva draws an intriguing connection between Jesus, the feminine, and Medusa, positing how iconography transfers the invisible into the realm of the visible through the fixed economy of icons, or in the seventh chapter, where she analyzes images of beheading from the French Revolution. The sheer number of artistic representations that Kristeva draws upon can seem intimidating, but there is a captivating and delicate attention to meaningful details in every single example that makes grappling with this book worthwhile.

The Severed Head Capital Visions

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