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

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Kristeva, boys eventually resign themselves to the fact that they can never have their mothers' bodies out of fear of whom?

2. Though Kristeva says it is impossible to tell the exact order of causality, notions of what also play a large part in purity customs?

3. Freud links a little boy's fear of horses to a fear of what?

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

5. Who in the New Testament said that sin did not enter the world until law was created?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. According to traditional beliefs in Christianity, how does Adam's original sin taint human freedoms?

3. How does Kristeva say the abject relates to lust?

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

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

6. What rules come with the permission to eat meat in the Old Testament?

7. How does social status play a role in purity customs in India?

8. How does Kristeva explain phobias?

9. What two ways of relating to the abject does Kristeva says Dostoevsky presents in "The Possessed"?

10. What does Kristeva say happens when one stops trying to seek out the "Other"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What does Kristeva mean when she says abject literature is an unstable category? What qualities does literature have to have to be abject? What is the narrative in abject literature supposed to be like? How does this cause a problem for the writer? How does language cause a problem?

Essay Topic 2

Explore the theme of language throughout the book. What does Kristeva seem to think about language and how it can be used? What reason does Kristeva give for why the abject exists outside of language? How can people relate to the abject if not through language? What do you think is the purpose of trying to explain the abject through an essay if it can cannot be felt through words?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the way phobias relate to the abject in the book. Where does Kristeva say phobias come from? What are people really afraid of? What do phobias seem to represent, with regard to the abject?

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