Bulgaria Says French Thinker Was a Secret Agent. She Calls It a ‘Barefaced Lie.’ (02kristeva) (02kristeva)

Who knew Times readers were such philistines? Julia Kristeva's work was hugely important to me when I was young, especially her concept of abjection. It had a profound influence on my outlook as a woman. Sad that some dismiss things so quickly that they don't immediately understand. If she flirted with espionage, I only like her more!

Julia Kristeva was a Bulgarian secret agent? I read a lot of philosophy but haven't got to her yet, but that she was a secret agent for Bulgaria doesn't surprise me, knowing basics of her life, and this revelation concerning her life doesn't bother me one bit. The basics of her life has her of strong left wing background. Her early years in Paris are characterized by strong left wing politics. Left wing politics is associated with group thinking, coordination, bureaucracy, secret agent life, etc. In other words her philosophical background for years apparently was indistinguishable from left wing politics and all that comes in its train. Let the reader of these words now imagine him or herself becoming strongly left wing: Automatically this means falling into the movements we call left wing and all the coordination overt and clandestine that comes with these movements. So I don't think there should be any surprise or shame a strong left wing intellectual would be associated with a form of espionage. But speaking of Kristeva, secret agent for Bulgaria the woman might have been, but alas, her fate was that of so many who have seen Paris: To be forever changed, to never go home again. In other words, she might have been a Bulgarian agent, but after living in Paris in the '60s and '70s? If she ever was a secret agent she must have thought "How can I go back and just burn all those papers, that old life?" Really, what woman wouldn't become difficult after seeing Paris?

Why is this said now? The target? Not Bulgarians but readers of French "theory." The target is also all independently--thinking dissident and especially left-wing intellectuals, especially of the French type with their famously avant-garde and creative theorizing style. Like all such ad hominem attacks on intellectuals, including the "Heidegger affair" --renewed every 10 years since the war ended because it cannot be made to meaningfully stick that an oeuvre, text or artwork, is guilty of its author's personal crimes--attacking thought as such. (Is then modern logic, invented by the anti-Semite Gottlob Frege, an evil?). The purpose is to denounce intellectual life as such, and use the media and its far simpler and characteristically ad hominem (and "whodunit" order-is- violated-but-soon-to-be-restored policing) discourse to impugn academia (and Kristeva's field, psychoanalysis). To denounce and to intimidate. When the police shoot someone's dog, they imply: next time we come for you. The significance of the claim now that she met with agents is to suggest not that a dissident intellectual might actually be a government spy, but that he might be accused of being one, or that the spy agency may try to use him without his knowledge. The world's government police agencies (and capital?) to dissident intellectuals and radical leftists of every kind: See how we can destroy people? Next time, we come for you. Meantime, we blame on victims our official terror.

Roberto Bolano's novel "By Night In Chile" features a Jesuit intellectual's confession about giving lessons on Marxism to members of Pinochet's junta. He seems innocent at first, not realizing that when he expounds on trends, disputes on the topic among Chile's intellectuals and names names, he dooms those so named. But who should bear the harshest judgment for what happened? Milton Friedman of the U. of Chicago directly advised Pinochet's junta on economic matters. Was that collaboration with a mass-murdering regime?

Agent Dimitri from Paris to HQ Central: Am meeting daily for lunch with contact at bistro. So much inside info on this deconstruction thing. Nefarious capitalist plot against Marxist dialectic. Of very dangerous potential. Must maintain meetings on regular schedule for rigorous assessment. The menu is decadent, chocolate mousse outrageous. Of course, I must bear this decadence for the cause, and take the tab for both us. Champagne is of much assistance for loosening the tongue. See expense numbers attached. Make sure you reimburse promptly.

The Tel Quel group were communists, so what's so difficult to believe about her being a communist agent? She and her friends broke with the USSR long after most of the west had. And they simply switched allegiance to another communist ideology – Maoism! She may have started spying for China at that point, but we'll never see the records on that.

Can a person be recruited as an agent without her knowledge and/or consent? The Bulgarians certainly wanted Julia Kristeva to work as an agent on their behalf, but did Ms. Kristeva consciously choose to participate as a state security agent? The evidence suggests she did not. The Bulgarian state security agents spent two years making contact and cultivating Ms. Kristeva as an "agent" to learn of various nationals' stomach aches and other inconsequential thoughts. They gave up; she was not "agent" material in their estimation. That there is nothing produced by Ms. Kristeva herself speaks volumes. It seems she was being courted, but nothing came of Bulgaria's attempts to make her an agent. But what does the Bulgarian government gain by impugning the dignity and honor of Julia Kristeva now? She is put in the position of trying to prove a negative - always a tremendously difficult one. Bulgaria has nothing; I believe Ms. Kristeva.

Personally it is more shocking to hear her open adherence to Maoism than her trivial conversations with Bulgarian spies. Maoism was mass murder and utmost totalitarianism. She owes the dead a lifetime of repentance.

I assume she was a collaborator, even if a not especially forthcoming one, since totalitarian states like communist Bulgaria turn everyone who enjoys any sort of privilege, as Kristeva evidently did, into a collaborator. Worse than her likely collaboration is her baleful influence--which seem sto be waning, I am happy to report--on what is now at least two generations of American academics.

Why is this such a big deal? Really? Only and a select group of paranoids and the French could see this as a threat.

After all, the Bulgarian security services could have threatened the friends and family that Ms. Kristeva left behind. The hypothesis that Kristeva was a spy is credible. After all, it is likely that our own president conspired with a foreign adversarial nation to steal an election, which is treason in the everyday meaning of that word. What does the Bulgarian government commission have to gain from lying about this? It is difficult to say whether or not one is a collaborator. Other questions are easier to answer. Did one aid and abet an adversarial nation? Did that nation help one? Did any of this happen knowingly? Isn't unwitting aid still aid? Was there a quid pro quo? Kristeva does poorly on the questions that are easy to answer. As does our own president.

The problem with this article is that I still do not know what "French thinker" Julia Kristeva actually thought about beyond fiction writing. I do not know the philosophy and so I am lost in reading this account.

There's too much varied documentation over a span of time -- difficult to forge all of that successfully. 98% chance these conversations happened. Kristeva was 30 and whatever motivated her at the time to talk to State Security repeatedly is something she completely denies today. So we are left with an open question. For whatever reason, Kristeva is choosing the "deny deny deny" strategy to the press. I am not sure that was the most prudent choice of hers. You can be sure this info will be added to her academic biography when she passes. I suspect Sartre -- who had strong opinions about those who collaborate in any form -- would be disappointed with Kristeva

The fine lines being what they are, the problem is her adamant use of the catchphrase 'fake news' in order to defend her persona today, now. This reflects poorly on her character as an intellectual.

From 1966 to 1973, Ms Kristeva had tea with fellow Bulgarians in Parisian cafes. In those days in Europe, it was normal for fellow nationals on opposite sides to meet and chat-- and still is. Gossip and debate followed; that's what you do in a Parisian cafe. Likewise, people everywhere transcend political differences to share conversations of common language and culture. This is what refugees do. Per instructions, said fellow Bulgarians reported these conversations back to the Bulgarian authorities because that's what they're supposed to do. Then, a 'dossier' was created on the aforesaid conversations. Ho hum. All of this is quotidian, and boringly obvious to anyone not a paranoid freak. Yet in the lingua franca of Stalinist doublespeak, all persons involved in chitchat meetups are 'agents'. But aren't we supposed to know that, too? What we're also supposed to know is that Stalinists didn't take kindly to people such as Ms Kristeva, and would seek to discredit them. Hence, a 'revelation' that she was an 'agent'. In 1991, Bulgarian spy dossiers would have been considered junk, tutti quanti. But now, they're somehow given the epistemic status of 'truthfully- rea-l by virtue- of- having- been- written'. Welcome to Facebook World.

I read her in grad school and thought her writing clear and strong as she represented strong feminist leanings. I think the person who stated there would be strings attached to a scholarship given to a Bulgarian student no doubt has some truth in it, but that she was dropped as a so-called agent proves not much was gained. Bulgaria I was told by a professor told me in a course about communist countries after the collapse of the regime imported roses and not much else. Not oil or gas like Rumania, but roses. Find connections between feminism, roses and the two nations of France and Bulgaria and you've got it, by golly!

How is one “involuntarily assassinated”?

Well, I met her once after a lecture (the "Hi, I'm..." sort of meeting), and have read several of her books. They're smart, and interesting. I can't say I'd be shocked to find out that this is truish, though I can't really see what a spy agency would expect to get out of a philosophy prof. And I also wouldn't be surprised much to find out that this is fabricated as part of Putin's general campaign to mess with the West. But I'm pretty sure that the shouting on FOX will be well underway by now.

With the US difficulties in Vietnam, many believed that the USSR was going to win the Cold War. In view of a possible Soviet victory over the democracies, many Western intellectuals with personal or family connections to the East began to hedge their bets. It was just common sense to have some pro-Soviet credentials on file -- totally confidential, of course. These people never anticipated a Ronald Reagan, a Margaret Thatcher, the turnaround of Western morale, and the eventual Western victory. But history is full of surprises.

Agree with the other comment :Seems like she didn’t want to make life miserable for loved ones back home and abroad.. no real information was given. She played the Bulgarian government like a violin; double agent perhaps !

If the Bulgarian services were stupid enough to pay someone whose influential work seems to have challenged comprehensively everything they stood for, in what real sense was she their agent? This kind of ambiguous file evidence needs to be treated with great caution. It has been thrown at lots of honorable people in Central and Eastern Europe, and those pushing this effort have impure motives.

So, if I've got this right, Kristeva's Soviet infatuation morphed into Maoist fascination but actually started with glib, and willing, informing on private citizens to the Bulgarian Secret Police? And she has the sand to take umbrage at this? I think maybe she's misinterpreted the text of her own life.

Kristeva was my visiting professor at Georgetown in the 1990s. She was a great champion of freedom and democracy.

It appears she did what all canny intellectuals in totalitarian regimes do: you do what you have to do to survive, hopefully without compromising too much. She traded innocuous gossip relating to her intellectual circle in France in order to gain certain privileges for her parents in Bulgaria. Nothing wrong with that, she did not appear to have betrayed anyone, or harmed anyone. She was much too smart not to have realized she was talking for a purpose. Nonetheless, she was so ineffectual the Bulgarian secret service dropped her. (Truth be told, what was there to reveal about French intellectuals? How many cigarettes they smoked that morning? lol) Intellectuals don't need to pass a purity test, they just need not have compromised their principles.

this makes her much more interesting...her role in academia was unfortunate for students in North America...French obscurantism IMHO

Sounds to me like wishful thinking on the part of the former Bulgarian government. Ms. Kristeva has been a champion of all the right causes and there is no reason to believe that this was anything other than a mission that never materialized. It's a shame that these issues are now being raised when she is at the end of a distinguished career. If anyone can prove that she did anything to harm anyone else as an agent of the Bulgarian state then let them come forward, otherwise this is just slander.