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

Product Information

For example, the blood that is poured on Carrie White (as well as her menstruation blood at the start of the film) are abject because they threaten meaning. The last third of this book has the most beautiful writing (in translation, anyway) but for that go to Kristeva on Proust, cuz here she just does it on Celine the Nazi.

Depending on your inner ego, depending on how much close to death and horror you have been, this is one of the best books I have ever read. So, see: the real tension is between our careful Me/not-me mental construct of selfhood and the abject within.We tend to think that animals flee from danger or repulsion, but many are curious to a degree just as humans are, and any psychobiological connections someone as adept on the topic as Kristeva could draw might be very useful. Labai gera pradžia, kur iškart aiškinama abjekcija, ir kiek tas veiksmas apima, tiksliau, kaip ir iki kiek Kristeva ją išplečia. So the subject/object thing is trembly with the tension between two dangers: to seal off into a regressive narcism, or to overidentify with scattered others for a fragmented ego. Likewise, there are many more literary examples she could approach: it would not be hard to produce a 500+ page book from this topic at all.

Once these items are outside of the body, they are abject due to the threat they pose to the “full” or “complete” subject. When mentally feeling my way about such matters, I like to switch stuff out: (a version of Roland Barthes' "commutation test") imagine pious believers bowing before a grand plinth holding up a revered brown coil of crap, or tourists lined up in an American museum to look at glass boxes containing the preserved vomit of our Founding Fathers. But you'll more than likely be goaded into a second reading anyway by Kristeva's fucking gorgeous writing. In the epic journey you are on from being an egg, indistinguishable from your mother, to an adult, you are becoming someone who can change things to suit you. Critics who seek an alternative to sexist and, in general, imperialist practices in psychoanalytic writing will want to read [this book].There were too many instances where the translation was repetitive, felt embellished and was just plain wordy. Because you can see yourself as part of an accident, you’re drawn to it even though you dread the thought. One of the book's most compelling aspects is Kristeva's exploration of the abject as a force that blurs the boundaries between self and other.