Bad Company

John Lechte's lucid and enlightening recent book on Julia Kristeva draws what has already become a long and rich record in her work as a continuum of development. He describes a succession of books and essays, and a succession of ideas and polemical positions to show her as an exemplum of history in which he can turn back layer on layer in the sequence of changes. But while the metaphor of movement through successive stages, of additions to a record of territory crossed and explored, is a convenient device in composing a scholarly work, the idea of progress and success implicit in that figure runs counter to the material he actually presents. The image of succeeding metamorphoses does, indeed, create a vivid impression of an individual history, but it is part of the rhetoric we use to describe the heroic labors of writers from some other age, not our own. The material suggests that the value of Kristeva's achievement lies at least as much in the hesitation, retrenchment, and unmaking of her positions. Perhaps more than any of the other members of the Tel Quel group, she invites the reader to give up the pleasures of contemplating the upward and outward sweep of an unfolding persona. She is less inclined than any

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