Jak rodzi się barbarzyństwo (przeł. Paulina Małochleb)
How is Barbarism Born? (trans. Paulina Małochleb)

Summary/Abstract: A speech delivered at the Université populaire du Musée des Arts premiers in Paris, on September 27, 2006. Kristeva analyses the notion of ‘barbarism’, investigating its applications in the perspective of afterthought on identity, making use of psychoanalytical inspirations; she considers the reasons for deliveries of barbarism when perceived as production of evil. The author considers what sort of a legal system structure could possibly be confronted with the modern barbarism which revealed itself during World War 2. She points out to a paradoxical existence of two types of barbarism: legal and the one coming across common damnation. She notices that barbarism is a phenomenon infecting all the parties to a conflict, as barbarians act against morality while the victims and witnesses produce a ‘hierarchy of barbarism’ in order to differentiate between a ‘regular’ crime and act of barbarism, war crime, thus relativising evil.

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