Dr. Deepinder Jeet Randhawa has written a notable monograph on Julia Kristeva who is well-known not only as a literary theorist but also as a linguist and feminist. Kristeva has drawn vital thoughts from her practice as a psychoanalyst in Paris.

The monograph's title "Julia Kristeva: Redefining Signification and the Punjabi Perspective" indicates that the zestful effort made is not only to briefly critique the specific poetics and feminist concerns of Julia Kristeva but also to understand her system in relation to the main streams of Punjabi literature ..

Julia Kristeva has re-defined literary signification as a simultaneous and double articulation of the "Semiotic-choric" energies and the Symbolic Law or cultural formations. The mutual mediation of the two produces the poetic sign. Taking insights from Plato, Lacan, Freud, Marx; Kristeva asserts that the intermediate poetic sign is articulated by the subject-in-process, always "split." The poetic sign is propelled and defiantly shaped by the "pre-thetic" instinctive drives through the Symbolic mediation.

A woman's body exceeds the Symbolic therefore is privileged to create the destablizing and destablized poetic sign. In its hospitality to cosmic energies for giving birth to a child, the female body bridges the gap between the self and the other.

Importance of this monograph lies in conveying to the reader that Julia Kristeva's theory that combines the poetic sign, the sacred, revolt, motherly semiotic-choric energies and the Symbolic, has been nearly practiced in the Punjabi texts. Dr. Randhawa has chosen to make her point by interpreting major Punjabi texts with special reference to; Guru Nanak Dev's revelatory poem Barah Mah (16th c.), the Sufis, Bhai Vir Singh's novel Sundari (late 19th c.) Puran Singh's poem Noble Woman at Home (20th c.) and Amrita Pritam's novel Pinjar (20th c.).

The briefly discussed Punjabi texts are close to Kristeva's vision of the poetic sign and literary text although the Punjabi perspective is free from the consciousness of Kristevan "split" and the Derridean kind of "mourning" to recollect some primal loss.

The monograph is certainly a contribution to inter-cultural dialogue and a welcome effort to locate the Punjabi literary identity in which even Kristeva is re-envisioned.

Gurbhagat Singh

About The Author Of 'Julia Kristeva Re-Signification And The Punjabi Perspective'

Deepinderjeet Randhawa teaches in the Department of English at Khalsa College, Patiala. She received her M.A. (English), M.Phil. (Anthropoligical Linguistics), Ph.D. (English) from Punjabi University, Patiala. Her chief interests are : Theory, Comparative Literature and Religion. She is the author of The Carnival of Difference : Imaginary and Semiotics of Dickens and Dostoyevsky and co-author of The Sikh Memory. Her papers on literature and religion have been published in Panjab University Arts Bulletin, Guru Nanak Dev University Journal of English Studies, Punjabi University Journal of Religious Studies, Perspectives on Guru Granth Sahib.