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

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This then poses the initial organizing structure of cognition as a scheme of fear and desire on an axis of presence and absence. You have spit in your mouth all the time and frequently swallow it; but, by expelling it from your body, you make it an object apart from you; sort of. It's about the psychological role of disgust and rejection, the innate sense of horror that establishes within us what is acceptable and appropriate, and what's on the other side of that divide.

She later turns to the work of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, and the publication of 'Journey to the End of the Night' as an almost ideal example of the purgative, artistic expression of the abject. Leon Roudiez (who died in 2004 I believe) translated several of Kristeva's works and I did enjoy reading those but the translation he did for this book seems a little off. The problems abjection causes are really the problems that are created whenever we only have two categories in which to sort things. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press.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.

What we are confronted with when we experience the trauma of seeing a human corpse (particularly the corpse of a friend or family member) is our own eventual death made palpably real.The reason for this ambivalence is because differentiation is not the only good thing to be pursued. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Kristeva's language is beautiful (even translated into English), so that made a lot of it almost delightful to read. In books like this, terms like "subject" and "other" take on meanings quite foreign to their day-to-day usage.