View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Kristeva points out that there is a corresponding amount of importance placed upon social status in societies where the autonomy of women is relatively what?

2. Kristeva says that the ritualization of defilement and purification is also responsible for creating inequality between whom?

3. When looking at impurity and the abject, Kristeva says things which extend beyond the body's margin are considered what?

4. Kristeva says the abject is somewhere between being an object and what?

5. Kristeva says the permission, given in the Old Testament, to eat some animals is given out of a recognition of what?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Kristeva say incest relates to the abject?

2. How does Kristeva says the abject can be expressed?

3. How do some societies try to purify a "defiled" person?

4. What is the correlation Kristeva presents between the importance of social status in sexual relationships and the equality between the sexes?

5. How does Kristeva say Christianity uses separation and division?

6. What does Kristeva say is the most plausible interpretation of the laws regarding ritual impurity in the Old Testament?

7. What does it mean when Kristeva says she gives a "phenomenological" account of the abject?

8. How does Mary Douglas explain the idea that impurity about the body is a phobia derived from the abject?

9. What does Kristeva mean when she talks about "subjectified abjection"?

10. What are the two stages in which Kristeva says the quest for the "Other" breaks down?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explore Celine's use of interesting stylistic choices in his writing. What are a few of the stylistic choices Kristeva points out? Why does she link his interesting use of language to the abject? What does Kristeva believe is Celine's goal with language? How can this goal be linked back to the abject?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the concept of the "zero-state" in young children. What does Kristeva mean when she talks about the zero state? What happens when a child starts to come out of the zero state? What are some of the fears and desires that a young, pre-cognitive child might have? How do the fears and desires sync up with Freud's model of the Oedipal triangle? How do they go against it?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the feeling Kristeva says the reader gets from reading Celine. How does she describe the feeling? How do his writings seem to capture the abject? How does she, specifically, say reading Celine makes her feel? What do you think she means when she says his writings are liberating?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 929 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample