Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (European Perspectives) (European Perspectives Series)

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Foucault, Michel. 2000. “Different Spaces” (1967). In Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Vol. 2. Trans. Robert Hurley, edited by James Faubion. London: Penguin, 175–86.

Semiotics has a pretty cut-and-dried conceptualization of the sign: (Object--mental image of object--Sound Image--standing for object [heard word]--Visual Version of Sound Image [print/writing]--motor skill representation, spoken and written). While some critics find Kristeva’s theorisation of the maternal body (and the psychoanalytic school of thought from which it is based) problematic, her work on abjection theory has enormous significance in the field of horror studies. Her work has provided a useful lens through which to understand the affective experience of the horror cinephile while helping to deconstruct the images of monstrosity that are returned to again and again in the genre.The psychoanalytic basis of Kristeva’s work, specifically concerning the abject maternal body, has lent itself to accusations of reproducing patriarchal representations of the female body. As Imogen Tyler writes in ‘Against Abjection’ (2009), ‘employing Kristeva‘s abject paradigm risks reproducing histories of violent disgust towards maternal bodies’ (77). Kristeva also associates the abject with jouissance: "One does not know it, one does not desire it, one joys in it [on en jouit]. Violently and painfully. A passion" (Powers 9). This statement appears paradoxical, but what Kristeva means by such statements is that we are, despite everything, continually and repetitively drawn to the abject (much as we are repeatedly drawn to trauma in Freud's understanding of repetition compulsion). To experience the abject in literature carries with it a certain pleasure but one that is quite different from the dynamics of desire. Kristeva associates this aesthetic experience of the abject, rather, with poetic catharsis: "an impure process that protects from the abject only by dint of being immersed in it" (Powers 29).

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.Becoming gradually less dependent, the child becomes further separated from the mother, continually rejecting her. This theory of early development is in contrast to Freud and Lacan’s theories which argue a child’s movement into the world results from the fear imposed on them by the father. Kristeva instead suggests that it is abjection which brings the child away from the mother and into the next developmental stage. a b Gross, Elizabeth (2012). "The Body of Signification". In Fletcher, John; Benjamin, Andrew (eds.). Abjection, Melancholia and Love: The Work of Julia Kristeva. Routledge. pp.92–93. ISBN 978-0415522939. The psychological mechanism is there for a reason. Its purpose is to help you differentiate. Differentiation, another psychological mechanism, is the lifelong process of changing from a cell in your mother’s body to becoming an independent and distinct human being. At every stage of this process, there’s a whole lot of abjection going on.

Abjection theory, particularly in regard to horror studies, has been a useful tool for reframing the ways in which we view the female body in the genre. As Xavier Aldana Reyes highlights in Horror Film and Affect: Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership (2016),

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Kristeva, J (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. Le Génie féminin: la vie, la folie, les mots, Fayard, Paris, 1999- (trans. Female Genius: Life, Madness, Words, Columbia University Press, New York, 2001–2004):

The glamorous flip-side of the sacred is of course the profane, and the possibility of ritual defilement is created by sacred prohibitions themselves through naming the excluded and/or symbolically expelling it in ritual purification. vous appelez ça du ‘Nietchevo’ n’est-ce pas? » Mises en scène de la langue « étrangère » chez Irène Némirovsky.” In Évelyne Enderlein and Lidiya Mihova (eds.), Écrire ailleurs au féminin dans le monde slave au XX e siècle. Paris: L’Harmattan, 55–84. When on a roll, I also wonder if the desensitization is permanent: suppose your duties (sorry) change, does the desensitization degrade to extinction over time? Does the matter's repulsive character reassert itself?Kristeva taught at Columbia University in the early 1970s, and remains a Visiting Professor. [11] She has also published under the married name Julia Joyaux. [12] [13] [14] Work [ edit ] Nilo Kauppi, Radicalism in French Culture: A Sociology of French Theory in the 1960s, Burlington, VT, 2010, p. 25. Yeah and but some such threateners (like poop!) contain no merely metaphorical contaminants (uh, e coli?) and present threats to the subject on the level of The Real like for real, a lesson learned long before science. Seems obvious, but... Kelly, O. (Ed.). (1993a). Ethics, politics, and difference in Julia Kristeva’s writing. New York: Routledge.