Kristeva's Revolt

      Kristeva criticizes the new forms of revolt in her piece through a careful examination of psychological motivations and cultural shifts.  Kristeva uses the inner experience to describe the impetus for revolt.  The inner experience “that is demanding, unique and able to appropriate the complexity of the pas in order to approach the present and future” demands the individual to understand and evaluate his or her revolt through themselves, rather than nihilistically rejecting it.  She equates the nihilistic rejection of one’s experience to a limited way of instigating change, because it inherently forgets the problems of the past rather than building on them through constructive change for the future.  The inner experience additionally escapes the “shortsightedness” of those politicians or persons in power, because such lawmakers have too broad a conception of the individual in order to appease as many people possible in a single moment.  The revolt of reflection often materializes as a more intimate or subtle stance against the status quo, and in some ways, Kristeva argues that such revolt is ideal. Freed from the constraints of popularity, the inner experience can “be innovative” through the unique experience.

     Kristeva reminds her audience that an essential form of revolt is simply questioning.  Often, the term is used to describe uprisings or movements that do not inherently question themselves. She asserts the importance of reflection on constructive criticism of social norms or rules and rejects a “nihilistic” rejection of disagreeable social structures because such rejection inherently ignores the human psychological  reasons as to why the structures existed in the first place.