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

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Julia Kristeva: After Freud, Melanie Klein, Winnicott, and Lacan, of course. And I learned a great deal from my supervision with André Green. However, Aldana Reyes suggests that the overwhelming focus on abjection in relation to female bodies is problematic. He writes that,

Chanter, T. (2008) The Picture of Abjection: Film, Fetish, and the Nature of Difference. Indiana University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/568606/the-picture-of-abjection-film-fetish-and-the-nature-of-difference-pdf Beardsworth, Sara, The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 36, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Open Court, Chicago, 2020 Kristeva's main thesis here is that what we call "horror" as a literary genre or a device in literature, film, or associated arts is really an outward manifestation of abjection, yet not the only manifestation of Lacanian abjection. Disjust, also, would be such a manifestation. The power of her work however is that she is able to connect the appeal of horror, of the abject, to the concept of the sublime in a way that finally investigates why we enjoy an attraction to things that would seem only to repulse any sane creature.Le temps sensible. Proust et l’expérience littéraire, Gallimard, Paris, 1994 (trans. Time and Sense: Proust and the experience of literature, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996) This seems obvious, but if we apply it to the subject it suggests that the conceptualization of other people as such precedes the formation of the "I." This idea is the basis of what is called Jacques Lacan's "Mirror Stage", a theoretical construct he did not invent but sure didn't mind taking credit for. Gross, E. (2012) ‘The Body of Signification’ in Abjection, Melancholia and Love: The Work of Julia Kristeva eds. J. Fletcher and A. Benjamin. Routledge. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1685240/abjection-melancholia-and-love-the-work-of-julia-kristeva-pdf As a post-modernist thinker, Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva believes that the only way one can relate to or understand the world is through the medium of language, and anything that is completely non-linguistic is literally unintelligible. In Powers of Horror Kristeva examines the notion of abjection through literature, she traces the role the abject has played in the progression of history, most notably in religion which she spends much time contemplating on.

Siobhan Chapman, Christopher Routledge, Key thinkers in linguistics and the philosophy of language, Oxford University Press US, 2005, ISBN 0-19-518767-9, Google Print, p. 166 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). In other words, the child learns at a primal level about their own body, including what is ‘clean and proper’. When childbirth occurs and the child leaves the womb (Kristeva refers to the womb as ‘the chora’), they enter the symbolic, patriarchal world of language and culture. As the child enters this world, they begin to associate the maternal, semiotic stage with shame and revulsion. Bulgaria’s Dossier Commission posts Julia Kristeva files online″, The Sofia Globe, 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018. Stemberger, Martina. 2006. Irène Némirovsky: Phantasmagorien der Fremdheit. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.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. 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... Thérèse mon amour: récit. Sainte Thérèse d’Avila, Fayard, 2008 (trans. Teresa, my love. An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila, Columbia University Press, New York, 2015)