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

which rational discourses in their structured hierarchy cannot assimilate. The
otherness, opposition, negation and ambiguous logic of the carnival transgress
and flout the laws of the Symbolic. In Kristeva’s work ‘the scene of the
carnival introduces the split speech act: the actor and the crowd are each in
turn simultaneously subject and addressee of discourse’ (Kristeva 1980: 46) 1 .
The carnival is thus a well-defined form of double. The double is non-identical
to itself and cannot be represented, as it contains representation inside itself
and carnival can thus be seen as containing its ‘other’ inside of itself (Lechte
1990: 105). Language too is carnivalesque, as it contains within itself the
ambivalent word. It is this ambivalence that is a central issue in Kristeva’s
theory. She reveals how, when a subject communicates, both received and
expressed meaning becomes deformed. This process of deformation or
alteration inextricably intertwines and joins together subjectivity and textuality
in a to-and-fro movement. The ambivalent deformation of meanings forms an
inherent part of everyday, rational and logical communication. To describe
how these two processes of communication are linked, Kristeva uses the terms
‘semiotic’ (le sémiotique), ‘symbolic’ (le symbolique) and ‘thetic’ (le
thétique). These terms are the foundation of the Kristevan theory which details
how the representational and symbolic processes form and inform language
and subjectivity.
1 This position can be seen as premised on the Freudian/Lacanian split subject, which Kristeva developed
more fully in her discussions of the speaking subject, textual analysis and social transgression.
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