1. Julia Kristeva’s “Abject”
From Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

2. Background on the author
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian- French psychoanalyst, literary critic, novelist, and educator
She has been an influential figure in French feminism as well as in structuralist and post-structuralist schools of thought
Contributions to psychoanalysis: the semiotic and the symbolic

3. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection
First published in 1980
One of Kristeva’s best-known works and one of the leading interpretations of abjection

4. Abjection
“Abjection” = the human reaction to the collapse of the subject into the object
Meaning in the symbolic order depends upon the distinction between subject and object
When we experience a trigger that threatens this distinction, we are confronted with a breakdown of meaning

5. Defilement
Kristeva identifies defilement as one of the triggers of abjection that reinforces “the frailty of the speaking being” (Horror 67)
“Filth is not a quality in itself, but it applies only to what relates to a boundary and, more particularly, represents the object jettisoned out of that boundary” (Horror 69)

6. Corporeal waste
Corporeal waste triggers the abject and represents the frailty of the symbolic order
Polluting objects are grouped into two types: excremental and menstrual

7. Pollution by food
Food is a polluting object because it crosses the border from the non-human into the human
All food is capable of defilement

8. Application to texts from this class
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Subject  object  subject
“Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe
Ends with the subject  object

9. Other examples

10. Discussion questions
Are there other examples of the abject from our readings so far that come to mind?
How do you think Kristeva’s “abject” (especially in terms of the fear of defilement) might relate to the concepts of monomania and obsession, as in Poe’s stories?