In Language and Politics in Julia Kristeva, Carol Mastrangelo Bove explores how Kristeva's theoretical and fictional writings contribute to an understanding of contemporary personal and international conflicts. In addition to examining Kristeva's turn to Eastern models--both Russian and Chinese--in thinking through a critique of symbolic language in Western patriarchal psychic formations, Bove also contributes to the debate over essentialism through innovative interpretations of such major works of twentieth-century French culture as Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, Simone de Beauvoir's She Came to Stay, Francois Truffaut's Jules and Jim, and Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game. Bove argues that the links between the body and the female, on the one hand, and authority and the male, on the other, are psychologically constructed, and are not necessarily or exclusively biological. The book concludes with an examination of Kristeva's Colette.