Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection Study Guide & Notes

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection Plot Summary

Preview of Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection Summary:

Kristeva examines the notion of abjection—the repressed and literally unspeakable forces that linger inside a person's psyche—and traces the role the abject has played in the progression of history, especially in religion. She turns to the work of Louis-Ferdinand Celine as an almost ideal example of the cathartic, artistic expression of the abject.

Kristeva begins with what she calls a "phenomenological" investigation of the abject. This means that Kristeva uses her personal experience—and the expressed experiences of others—to get some idea of what the abject is. From that basis, she goes onto give it a more rigorous definition. The abject, in short, is a kind of non-object that lingers in a person's psyche, the consequence of repression. In order to understand why the abject is not an object, one must under the post-modernist theory of language that Kristeva subscribes to. Kristeva believes that the entire world, including one's self, is...
(read more)