The chora appears is Kristeva's book _La Revolution du langage poetique.
L'avant garde a la fin fu XIXe siecle. Lautreamont et Mallarme_ Paris
Seuil, 1974. The first part is translated into English as Wynship points
out as _Revolution in Poetic Language_ New York, Columbia UP, 1984
She explains chora in psychoanalytic terms.
It is a very difficult text I have only read it in French and don't know
how much is missing from the English edition, but for a very useful
introduction to all of Kristeva's work see John Lechte, _Julia Kristeva_,
Routledge, 1990. This is what he says about the chora (p.128) following
Kristeva
'The chora is a kind of place, or receptacle. It is not easy to make this
element intelligible because it is not, strictly speaking, representable.
What may be represented, conceptualized, thought of, imagined, made clear
and explicit, and is above all a product of reglementation and order, is
part of the symbolic order or simply, the symbolic. the ego and its
narcissism are part of the symbolic. To speak about the chora at all is
paradoxical, given that to do so is to give it a place in the semiotic. The
chora is a mobile and 'extremely provisional articulation constituted by
movements and their ephemeral stases' (Kristeva 1984,p.25) The chora is a
semiotic, non geometrical space where drive activity is 'primarily'
located.'
clare
***********************************************************
Clare O'Farrell
email:c.ofarrell@xxxxxxxxxx
web page: http://www.qut.edu.au/edu/cpol/foucault/
***********************************************************
L'avant garde a la fin fu XIXe siecle. Lautreamont et Mallarme_ Paris
Seuil, 1974. The first part is translated into English as Wynship points
out as _Revolution in Poetic Language_ New York, Columbia UP, 1984
She explains chora in psychoanalytic terms.
It is a very difficult text I have only read it in French and don't know
how much is missing from the English edition, but for a very useful
introduction to all of Kristeva's work see John Lechte, _Julia Kristeva_,
Routledge, 1990. This is what he says about the chora (p.128) following
Kristeva
'The chora is a kind of place, or receptacle. It is not easy to make this
element intelligible because it is not, strictly speaking, representable.
What may be represented, conceptualized, thought of, imagined, made clear
and explicit, and is above all a product of reglementation and order, is
part of the symbolic order or simply, the symbolic. the ego and its
narcissism are part of the symbolic. To speak about the chora at all is
paradoxical, given that to do so is to give it a place in the semiotic. The
chora is a mobile and 'extremely provisional articulation constituted by
movements and their ephemeral stases' (Kristeva 1984,p.25) The chora is a
semiotic, non geometrical space where drive activity is 'primarily'
located.'
clare
***********************************************************
Clare O'Farrell
email:c.ofarrell@xxxxxxxxxx
web page: http://www.qut.edu.au/edu/cpol/foucault/
***********************************************************