This Incredible Need to Believe

Nowhere else does Julia Kristeva provide such a sustained treatment of her views on religion. Kristeva scholars and students will find this book an indispensable text. – Noelle McAfee, Emory University
In this book, Julia Kristeva analyzes various pressing issues of our time, including the crisis in the Middle East, terrorism, depression, anorexia, and addiction, along with a general crisis of meaning. With her customary brilliance, she argues that belief and faith make it possible to speak but also to question. Provocatively, she describes a vein of Christianity and Catholicism that open up rather than close down that infinite questioning, which she maintains is necessary to delay the death drive. Here, Kristeva uses her incisive psychoanalytic acumen to diagnose the ‘culture wars’ and the ‘clash of religions’ that threaten world peace. – Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University, and editor of The Portable Kristeva
An impressive … crystallization of [Kristeva’s] religious and psychoanalytic thought. * Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature *
Provides a new and provocative psychoanalytic account of religion. * Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality *
Focused and insightful… . Compelling and remarkable for its staunch unwillingness to take sides, this book sets forth Kristeva’s most sustained treatment of religion in a format that will interest both scholars and anyone looking for an accessible introduction to her methods and preoccupations. * Publishers Weekly *
[A] refreshing meditation… . [Offers] insight into how psychoanalysis can allow for a new approach to the study of religion by simply being attentive to its discourse. * Irish Theological Quarterly *
A helpful commentary and introduction to Kristeva’s major work over the last two decades… . Recommended. * Choice *

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”

Beverley Bie Brahic is a translator and poet living in Paris and Stanford, California. In addition to the writing of Kristeva, she has translated the works of Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida, and Francis Ponge.

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