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Basic Info
- Author: Julia Kristeva
- Year: 1982
- Type: #secondary1
Summary (brief)
-Post-structuralist and feminist theory; abjection explores why bodily fluids (wounds, corpses, outcasts) evoke a visceral reaction of intense horror and disgust is not just about uncleanness - but a deep psychological panic over the collapse of boundaries. The "abject" is that which is neither a subject (a person) or an object (a thing) but a threat that breaks down the borders separating "me" from "not-me" as a child separates from its mother's body;
Major Themes
Key Passages / Quotes
Quote 1
quote:: “Why does corporeal waste, menstrual blood and excrement, or everything is assimilated to them, from nail-parings to decay, represent---like a metaphor that would have become incarnate--the objective frailty of symbolic order?”
page:: 70
themes:: trans-corporeal
Quote 2
quote:: “The other sex, the feminine, becomes synonymous with a radical evil that is to be suppressed”
page:: 70
themes:: trans-corporeal, hating women, radical, abject
Quote 3
quote:: “A split seems o have set in between, on the one hand, the body's territory where an authority without guilt prevails, a kind of fusion between mother and nature, and on the other hand, a totally different universe of socially signifying performances where embarrassment, shame, guilt, desire, etc. come into play--the order of the phallus”
page:: 74
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender, feminist nature, abject
Quote 4
quote:: “When food appears as a polluting object, it does so as oral object only to the extent that orality signifies a boundary of the self's clean and proper body. Food becomes abject only if it is a border between two distinct entities or territories”
page:: 75
themes:: trans-corporeal, abject
Quote 5
quote:: “The tragic and sublime fate of Oedipus sums up and displaces th mythical defilement that situates impurity on the untoucheable "other side" constituted by the other sex, within the corporeal border--the thin sheet of desire---and, basically, within the mother woman--the myth of natural fullness”
page:: 83
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender
Quote 6
quote:: “Blinding is thus an image of splitting; it marks, on the very body, the alteration of the self and clean into the defiled--scar taking the place of a revealed and yet invisible abjection”
page:: 84
themes:: trans-corporeal, fragmentation
Quote 7
quote:: “biblical impurity is permeated with the tradition of defilement; in that sense, it points to but does not signify an autonomous force that can be threatening for divine agency. I shall suggest that such a force is rooted, historically (in the history of religions) and subjectively (in the structuration of the subject's identity), in the cathexis of maternal function---mother, women, reproduction”
page:: 91
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender, impurity
### Quote 8
quote:: “Are there no subjective structurations that, within the organization of each speaking being, correspond to this or that symbolic-social system and represent, if not stages, at least types of subjectivity and society?”
page:: 92
themes:: subjectivity
### Quote 9
quote:: “three major categories of abomination: 1) food taboos; 2) corporeal alteration and its climax death; and 3) the feminine body and incest”
page:: 93
themes:: monstrous-feminine
Quote 10
quote:: “the cultic center of purity than on impurity, which has become a metaphor for idolatry, sexuality, and immortality”
page:: 93
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender
Quote 11
quote:: “But blood, as a vital element, also refers to women, fertility, and the assurance of fecundation”
page:: 96
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender
Quote 12
quote:: “which links him to the ab-ject, to that non-introjected mother who is incorporated as devouring, and intolerable. The obsession of the leprous and decaying body would thus be the fantast of a self-rebirth on the part of a subject who has not introjected his mother but has incorporated a devouring mother”
page:: 102
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender
Quote 13
quote:: “Thus one might say that if the inside/outside boundary is maintained, osmosis nevertheless takes place between the spiritual and the substantial, the corporeal and the signifying--a heterogeneity that cannot be divided back into its components”
page:: 120
themes:: trans-corporeal, abject, space
Quote 14
quote:: “The brimming flesh of sin belongs, of course, to both sexes; but its root and basic representation is nothing other that feminine temptation” (126)
page:: 126
themes:: feminine, desire
Quote 15
quote:: “when narrated identity is unbearable, when the boundary between subject and object is shaken, and when even the limit between inside and outside becomes uncertain, the narrative is what is challenged first”
page:: 141
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender, craft
Quote 16
quote:: “Giving birth: the height of bloodshed and life, scorching moment of hesitation (between inside and outside, ego and other, life and death), horror and beauty, sexuality and the blunt negation of the sexual”
page:: 155
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender, feminist nature, space, sex
Quote 17
quote:: “dark portals of life”
page:: 160
themes:: trans-corporeal, gender, feminist nature, feminist space
Genre Notes
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
-The abject (ambiguous traumatic entity that does not respect borders, positions or rules)
-The speaking subject (human mind attempting to maintain a stable identity through logic, language, and social laws) #confession
-The mother/maternal body - the fluid landscape of infancy.
The corpse: the ultimate manifestation of the abject - the absolute border where life turns to death - violently reminding the observer of their own inescapable materiality History of Sexuality hiding dead bodies
Louis Ferdinand Celine - uses fractured prose to navigate abjection
Theory Connections
Related Texts
My Argument / Interpretation
Dissertation Relevance
How could this matter to my project?
-Concerned with the breakdown of boarders (self, other, inside, outsider; separation from mother's body)