Abjection

The concept of the Abject, theorized by the French critic Julia Kristeva (1941–) in Powers of Horror (1980, trans. 1982), represents a significant advance over the binary logic of self and other that is characteristic of earlier psychoanalysis.

Conventional psychoanalytic thought proposes the oppositional integrity of subject and object, thus maintaining a number of apparently logical mental boundaries between the two. Kristeva’s theory, however, sees the subject and the object not merely as terms locked in opposition to each other, but also as discrete identities in and of themselves. This reconfiguration has an inevitably radical effect on the boundaries through which the self effectively demarcates itself from its other. In questioning the reassuring wholeness and integrity of ego-identity, abjection effectively erodes these borders, and thus proposes that the other, the taboo, the desired but dangerous, may already form part of the self.

Kristeva suggests, moreover, that there exists a tense relationship between the body and the mind, and that certain excretions and secretions from the former cause psychological distress within the latter quite simply because they are graphic reminders of how the self and the other are intimate. The body, as it were, is constantly engaged in abjecting—that is, repelling or rejecting—substances from out of its illusory wholeness. Yet those substances are, or have been until recently, part of the living tissue of the self and are intimately engaged in its survival or reproduction: their retention in certain circumstances, however, is traumatic, and in many cases pathologically dangerous in a literal or physiological sense. The classical abject excretions of the body include, in no order of precedence, blood (which has long been regarded as subject to religious and moral taboos), tears, saliva, and perspiration.

Orifices are especially significant in this context, because they are themselves abject, being both part of the body and an entry into (or out of) its integrity—they represent, in other words, the very fragility of the boundary of self in such a way that unbroken skin could never. The boundaries that separate life and death are themselves psychoanalytically abject: the moment of birth is saturated with fluids and excretions, the child itself being one of these at the moment of its emergence, neither an independent being nor an unequivocal part of the mother.

Death, too, brings dissolution and a gateway into another state of being, be it an afterlife or extinction. When the corpse decomposes, of course, the perceiver is reminded that he or she, too, is corrupt, destined to dissolution, a potential source of disgust or infection for those who themselves will, in turn, eventually perceive the dead and abject self. There is more to the abject, therefore, than a simple reflex of distaste or disgust. Dracula, for example, is particularly concerned with the dissolution of boundaries, and its specific focus on blood as an icon of individual, racial, and sexual identity makes Bram Stoker’s novel a frequent reference point in criticism.

Hughes, W. (2012) Historical Dictionary of Gothic Literature. Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press