Morphing Moonlight: Gender, masks and carnival mayhem- The ...

The poetic function of Jakobson’s theory relates to Kristeva’s poetic
discourse, in as much as it is seen not to belong to any one type of discourse,
such as poetry or literature. However, Jakobson’s definition was not sufficient
for Kristeva. She did not agree with his assigning of poetic language to the
position of a sub-code within the linguistic code. For Kristeva poetic language
stands for ‘the infinite possibilities of language, and all other language acts are
merely partial realizations of the possibilities inherent in “poetic language”’
(Kristeva 1984: 2). Literary practice uses language to free the subject from the
restrictions imposed by a number of discourses, whether psychical, social, or
linguistic. For Kristeva, all literary practice occurs within a historical
dimension in which the subject plays a role. Poetic language and its signifying
process constitute the ‘semiotic system’ (Kristeva 1984: 3). In her detailing of
this system in Revolution in poetic language, she places great reliance on the
work of Lacan and draws on the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure
and Charles Pierce, although the greater influence on her own work was the
writing of the French linguist Emile Benveniste. Although Kristeva felt that
Benveniste’s theory was also caught within the need to categorise and
systematise, she could, by making use of his work, affirm both the need for a
textual analysis taking into consideration the subject within a given historical
context and the removal of the barriers that separate related disciplines.
Kristeva also utilised and developed the theories of Hegel, Althusser and
Derrida’s idea of text as different from itself, which she combined with the
Lacanian/Freudian concept of the split subject. Thus she ensured that her
theory placed the speaking subject and poetic language firmly in the socio-
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