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These bodily "identifications" and "differentiations" are regulated by the maternal body before birth and the mother during infancy. Kristeva suggests that the operations of identification and differentiation necessary for signification are prefigured in the body's incorporations and expulsions of food in particular (see Revolution in Poetic Language and Powers of Horror). Just as bodily drives are discharged into signification, the logic of signification is already operating within the materiality of the body. Ultimately, signification requires both the semiotic and symbolic there is no signification without some combination of both. But, without the semiotic, all signification would be empty and have no importance for our lives. Without the symbolic, all signification would be babble or delirium. On the other hand, we could say that words give life meaning (nonreferential meaning) because of their semiotic content. For example, words have referential meaning because of the symbolic structure of language. The symbolic element is what makes reference possible. The symbolic element of signification is associated with the grammar and structure of signification. As the discharge of drives, it is also associated with the maternal body, the first source of rhythms, tones, and movements for every human being since we all have resided in that body. The semiotic is associated with the rhythms, tones, and movement of signifying practices. The semiotic element is the bodily drive as it is discharged in signification. Kristeva maintains that all signification is composed of these two elements. She is now famous for the distinction between what she calls the "semiotic" and the "symbolic," which she develops in her early work including Revolution in Poetic Language, "From One Identity to the Other" in Desire in Language, and Powers of Horror. In New Maladies of the Soul, Kristeva describes the drives as "as pivot between 'soma' and psyche', between biology and representation" (30 see also Time and Sense).
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Throughout her writing over the last three decades, Kristeva theorized the connection between mind and body, culture and nature, psyche and soma, matter and representation, by insisting both that bodily drives are discharged in representation, and that the logic of signification is already operating in the material body. Theories of the body are particularly important for feminists because historically (in the humanities) the body has been associated with the feminine, the female, or woman, and denigrated as weak, immoral, unclean, or decaying. Her notion of abjection as an explanation for oppression and discrimination. Her focus on the significance of the maternal and preoedipal in the constitution of subjectivity and 3. Her attempt to bring the body back into discourses in the human sciences 2. Three elements of Kristeva's thought have been particularly important for feminist theory in Anglo-American contexts:ฤก. Although Kristeva does not refer to her own writing as feminist, many feminists turn to her work in order to expand and develop various discussions and debates in feminist theory and criticism.