Reading Kristeva through the Lens of Edusemiotics: Implications for education

Abstract

There are two focal points to this article. One is to address Julia Kristeva’s theoretical corpus in the context of philosophy of education. Kristeva’s notion of subject in process problematises education with its habitual emphasis on ‘product’. Another is to consider her impact from the perspective of edusemiotics. Edusemiotics is a new direction in educational philosophy and theory, and Kristeva represents one contemporary French intellectual who implicitly inspired the creation, research and development of edusemiotics. The article will briefly address the distinguished features of edusemiotics, the central of which is process ontology in contrast to the old Cartesian paradigm of substance dualism that continues to haunt education. The article will also address the role of presymbolic (or semiotic) dimension in the process of self-formation and, as a follow up, reformulate the concept of lifelong education and teacher training.