The Semiotics of Hysteria: A Kristevan Reading of Madness in Three Contemporary Female British Dramatists Caryl Churchill, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Sarah Daniels[Latin Thesis]

Ava Golkar

Language, as the sole means of verbal communication, can defy its purpose by excluding whatever stands outside of its “symbolic” system. It follows that exercising communication outside of this system becomes problematic and isolates the subject by limiting its access to the meaning making process. Unable to fully express him/herself and lacking any alternatives, the suppressed and cast away subjects either submit to the imposed violence of this non-inclusive system of language, or attempt to break free by making a point of the system’s inadequacies. It can be argued that the root of this plight is the impenetrable nature of this conception of the “symbolic”. Julia Kristeva, the French philosopher, challenges this understanding of language as solely demonstrated through the “symbolic”, and suggests the “semiotic chora” and the possibility of poetic language, where there is an optimal balance between the “symbolic” and the “semiotic”, honing a perfect environment for sustaining a fully functioning signification process. Post-modern British women playwrights, Sarah Daniels, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Caryl Churchill have treated this subject in a number of their works. This research, focusing on the female characters of Ripen our Darkness, The Love of the Nightingale and, A Mouthful of Birds and using Kristeva's linguistic and psychoanalytical notions of “semiotic”, “chora”, “abjection” and “revolt”, sheds light on the process in which the female characters of these plays recognize the “symbolic” as their archenemy and struggle to stand against the inherent violence of language, using their madness. Keywords: Subject in Process, Semiotic, Symbolic, Chora, Poetic language, Abjection, Revolt, Herethics, Madness