Definitions of the Abject

The cast off; the taboo; the unclean; filth

The exrescence: mucus, blood (especially menstrual), nails, urine, excrement

The uncanny; the corpse

The monstrous mother; the alien

A psychoanalytic and aesthetic theory exponded by Julia Kristeva in Powers of

Horror: An Essay on Abjection.

"To each ego its object, to each superego its abject". (Kristeva)

“On close inspection, all literature is probably a version of the apocalypse that seems

to me rooted, no matter what its sociohistorical conditions might be, on the fragile

border (borderline cases) where identities (subject/object, etc.) do not exist or only

barely so—double, fuzzy, heterogeneous, animal, metamorphosed, altered, abject.”

(Kristeva)

Cultural Applications: Louis-Ferdinand Céline; Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty

Abject Art: Hermann Nitsch, Gunter Brus, Otto Muehl, Carolee Schneemann

Mary Kelly , Genesis P. Orridge, GG Allin, Ron Athey, Franko B, Lennie Lee , Kira

O' Reilly. Joel Peter Witkin, Andres Serrano.

Whitney Museum of Abject Art (1993).

Strengths and weaknesses of the Kristeva model of the Abject

Strengths

Appeals to universal sense of disgust when faced with body fluids and waste products

Explains popular cultural narrative of horror and misogyny

Builds on a tradition of psychoanalysis derived from Freud and Lacan

Appeals to the reality of violence against women and links with its psychosocial

dimensions.

Relates to common patterns of encoding based on distinctions between clean and

unclean

Creates an ambiguous and richly poetic metaphor for the sense limit and liminality

Outlines a conflict in gender between patriarchal signification and the female

imaginary

Explains female oppression as an inability to cast off the internalization of the mother

Maps out an aesthetic and political category derived from both from psychoanalytic

reading and corporeal differences

Establishes a widely- deployed key term to describe and organize an abject art

movement

The Weaknesses

A fuzzy, confused and contradictory category is loosely sketched.

The psycho-analytic foundations have been superseded and discredited.

The psycho-analytic models appeal to an academic and professional cult rather than

open enquiry

Tends to re-enforce horror and disgust rather than celebration of the open body

(Bakhtin)

The abject category relies on a questionable notion of primary matricide

The explanatory model is grounded primarily in its application to avant-garde art

Rather than being actually or potentially emancipatory, the abject school of enquiry

reproduces the script of exclusion and exploitation. ‘Why not develop a certain degree

of rage against the history that has written such an abject script for you?’ (Spivak

1992: 62)

The mythological or aestheticizing approach displaces the actuality and singularity of

lived bodily experience

It is unclear how affirmative or redemptive aspects of the abject upstage and displace

negative and destructive modes of abjection

As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak asks: ‘What are the cultural politics of application of

the diagnostic taxonomy of the abject?’ (Spivak 1992: 55)

Further reading:

Betterton, R. (2006) ‘Promising Monsters: Pregnant Bodies, Artistic Subjectivity, and

Maternal Imagination’, Hypatia 21(1): 80–100.

Braidotti, R. (1994) Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in

Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Butler, J. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London and

New York: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London

and New York: Routledge.

Constable, C. (1999) ‘Becoming the Monster’s Mother’, pp.173–202 in A.Kutin (ed.)

Alien Zone II. London: Verso.

Covino, D. C. (2004) Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine

and Culture. New York: The State University of New York Press.

Creed, B. (1993) The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis.

London: Routledge.

Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and

Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Frueh, J. (2001) Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love. Berkeley: University of

California Press.

Gear, R. (2001) ‘All Those Nasty Womanly Things: Women Artists,Technology and

the Monstrous-Feminine’, Women’s Studies International Forum 24(3): 321–33.

Halberstam, J. (1995) Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters.

Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

Haraway, D. (1992) ‘The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for

Inappropriate/d Others’, 295–337 in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P.A.Treichler (eds)

Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.

Harrington, T. (1998) ‘Speaking Abject in Kristeva’s Power of Horror’, Hypatia

13(1): 138–57.

Jacobs, A. (2007) On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis and the Law of the Mother.

New York: Columbia University Press.

Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L.S.Roudiez.

New York: Columbia University Press.

Menninghaus, W. (2003) Disgust: Theory and History of a Strong Sensation, trans. H.

Pickford. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Mulvey, L. (1991) “A Phantasmagoria of the Female Body: The Work of Cindy

Sherman.” New Left Review 188 137-150.

Oliver, K. (1993) Reading Kristeva: Unravelling the Double Bind. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press.

Russo, M. (1994) The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity. NewYork:

Routledge.

Shildrick, M. (2002) Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self.

New York and London: Routledge.

Spivak, G. (1990) ‘Questions of Multiculturalism’, 54–60, in Postcolonial Critic:

Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. Sarah Harasym.London: Routledge.

Spivak, G. (1992) ‘Extreme Eurocentrism’, Lusitania 1(4) (Special Issue ‘TheAbject

America’): 55–60.

Ussher, J. (2006) Managing the Monstrous Feminine: Regulating the Reproductive

Body. London: Routledge.

Yaeger, P. (1992) ‘The “Language of Blood”: Toward a Maternal Sublime’,

Genre 25 (Spring): 5–24.

Young, I. M. (2005) On Female Body Experience: ‘Throwing Like a Girl’ and Other

Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.