At the Risk of Thinking

Alice Jardine is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, USA. Her publications include Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (1985), Living Attention: On Teresa Brennan (2007), and, as translator, Julia Kristeva's Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (ed. Leon Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine and Leon Roudiez, 1980).

Jardine conveys the joys, pains, and struggles of this supremely creative life, animating for the reader a compassionate, brilliant woman, in her own words "an energetic pessimist." This book is a great read, most illuminating for anyone interested in this outstanding and fascinating woman and her formidable contributions.

• AcknowledgmentsAuthor’s NoteIntroduction: At the Risk of ThinkingThe Question of the Intellectual—AgainIn the Face of ResistanceMy Coup de FoudreWhy Now? The Contestatory IntellectualNotes on the BiographyPart I Bulgaria, My Suffering (1941–1965)A Production of HistoryStoyan KristevAll My Childhood Was Bathed in ThisKristina KristevaOne Spoonful at a TimeI Didn’t Want to Take Care of All ThatThe JournalistPure OxygenThe WriterSputnik or the New NovelEndings, BeginningsPart II The Crazy Truth of It (1965–1979)Early ExileThe Lost Territory Tzvetan StoyanovMentors and a DoctoratePhilippe SollersTel Quel ResurrectionsSit Down! Sit Down!Dominique RolinMultiversesBeneath the Paving StonesSemiotike (1969) Language, the Unknown (1969)Émile BenvenisteThe Text of the Novel (1970)Ilse BarandeRevolution in Poetic Language (1974)The Pedagogical ImperativeThe Desire for China About Chinese Women (1974)The Intimate Acts of the Modern PersonalityDavidCompartmentalizingReliance: An Ethic of CareThe Crossing of Signs (1975)New York CityThe DissidentPolylogue (1977)Crazy Truth (1979)Part III Becoming Julia Kristeva (1980–TODAY)A Vertical PresentYes, Yes, of Course, But What Shall We Do Now?Death, That Strange Voice . . .1 The 1980s: Strangers to Ourselves and OthersÇa continue: Work, Family, the Île de RéWhatever Happens to Me, That’s What I Write AboutQuestions of Civilization Cannot Be Managed by PoliticsPowers of Horror (1980)Tales of Love (1983)In the Beginning Was Love (1985)Black Sun (1987)Strangers to Ourselves (1988)And Yet, It’s up to Women . . . If You Could Just Die . . .2 The 1990s: Revolt, She SaidAccolades and AccusationsNew Directions: Fiction and RevoltThinking Through the NovelThe Samurai (1990)The Old Man and the Wolves (1991)Possessions (1996)Time and Sense (1994)Revolt After the RevolutionNew Maladies of the Soul (1993)The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt (1996)Intimate Revolt (1997)The Future of Revolt (1998)Nations Without Nationalism (1990)Revolt, She Said (1998)The Severed Head (1998)Transcend yourself!The Feminine and the Sacred (1998)Hannah Arendt (1999)I Cannot See Any Light . . .3 The 2000s: An Intellectual Who Works on the InvisibleAgainst CynicismI Can Only Rely On My Own StrengthsPsychoanalysis Is a HumanismSingular Universalism and Human RightsCrisis of the Subject (2000)At the Risk of Thought (2001)Micropolitic (2001)Chronicles of a Sensitive Time (2003)Open Letter to the President (2003)Their Look Pierces Our Shadows (2011)Murder in Byzantium (2004)Hatred and Forgiveness (2005)Alone, a Woman (2007)Melanie Klein (2000)Colette (2002)Teresa, My Love (2008)This Incredible Need to Believe (2007)Reinventing Secular HumanismThe "French Death of God Theologian"The Crisis of IdealityTeresa, Our ContemporaryRepresenting the Atheists of the World4 The 2010s: Traveling Through MyselfNo One Owns the TruthThe Why Rather than the HowNo One Pays Attention to the Political Until It Feels SpiritualPerpetual MotionBeauvoir Presents/In the Present (2016)Passions of Our Time (2013)The Enchanted Clock (2015)It’s a True Nightmare or a Pitiful Farce, I’m Not Sure Which . . . Who’s Afraid of Julia Kristeva?A Violence That Reaches the HeartIt’s Just Not My LifeAppendix 1: Document #10 of the “Sabina” FileAppendix 2: A Chronological List of Kristeva’s Books in FrenchNotesIndex