Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1980

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Translator’s Note-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-11

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Themes

The Abject as the Source of Horror and Disgust

In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva examines the concept of abjection, identifying the experience of the abject as the source of human horror and disgust. Familiarity with Kristeva’s theory of human psychosexual development in a child’s individuation from the mother is a necessary first step before moving to an understanding of how and why a confrontation with the abject causes horror and disgust.

Kristeva’s theory posits that in the earliest stages of development, the infant does not differentiate its body from their mother’s body. At this preverbal Semiotic stage, the child has no notion of “self.” Between four and eight months of age, the child begins the process of separation from the mother. This separation is necessary for the child to become a fully formed mature speaking-subject, distinct from other objects. During this process, the abject arises. Kristeva connects the abject to “our earliest attempt to release the hold of maternal entity [...] It is a violent, clumsy breaking away, with the constant risk of falling back under the sway of a power as securing as it is stifling” (13). Thus, although the process of subject development is difficult and painful, it is also necessary for the child to exist and enter the Symbolic realm of language. The child longs for the mother but also fears being subsumed. As Estelle Barrett writes, “Fundamentally, abjection refers to the processes of expulsion necessary for establishing borders between ‘I’ and the other” (Barret, Estelle. Kristeva Reframed. I.B. Tauris, 2011). The connection between abjection and borders becomes established in this early process.

Further, Kristeva theorizes that individuals experience a “primal repression” of the struggle, grief, and longing, arguing

the ‘unconscious’ contents remain here excluded but in strange fashion: not radically enough to allow for a secure differentiation between subject and object, and yet clearly enough for a defensive position to be established (7).

Her point is that the longing, grief, and pain remain hidden in the subconscious. There, the abjected suffering forms a fragile boundary, separating subject from object, that is the site of disgust and horror. For example, the physical boundary of the human body is skin, a very fragile container. Biological processes that remain inside the body are simply a part of the whole self and do not cause disgust or horror. However, when substances are ejected from inside the body to the outside, they become disgusting. Thus, while saliva is present in all human mouths, when it is ejected from the inside to the outside as spit, the human response is disgust. Likewise, feces inside the body are simply part of the body. Feces on a sidewalk, however, are disgusting. Finally, while arms and legs are a part of the body’s integrity, severed limbs become a source of horror.

For Kristeva, the paradigm of abjection is the human corpse: “The corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life” (4). The corpse in this formulation, outside the safeguards of religion and knowledge, is a graphic reminder of mortality and loss of meaning. The abject corpse creates horror in the one who confronts it. There are also gradations of horror: coming upon a corpse unexpectedly and without warning elicits more horror than confronting a dead body in a funeral home, for example. In either case, the human body appears as waste. The abject corpse, as a reminder of the boundary between the living and the dead, has the greatest potential for horror of any abject object. Indeed, when the boundary between the living and the dead is unstable, subverted, and broken, as in the construction of beings such as vampires or zombies, the result is horror.

Thus, while abjection is connected to waste, blood, and vomit, for example, these human responses to abjection are not abjection itself. Abjection, rather, is the disturbance of boundaries, a threat to the individuation of the subject, and a danger to the social order. This is why abjection creates horror and disgust; just as it begins in a preverbal phase of a subject’s life, it also appears in reminders of inevitable human death, a post-verbal state where language and meaning cannot exist. Should the boundaries between life and death fail to hold, as they always and already do, the individuated subject dissolves, and the world ends.

Exclusion and Marginalization as Societal Responses to the Abject

Kristeva’s theory of abjection remains a crucial notion for critical theories concerning gender, race, and class in Western cultures. At the heart of any discussion of abjection is the notion of exclusion at both the biological and cultural levels. One of Kristeva’s primary thematic concerns in Powers of Horror is to detail how societies, using prohibitions and taboos, establish an inside/outside dichotomy. She further addresses why a culture does so and the implications of an eruption of the abject for society.

Kristeva’s model of psychosexual human development predicts abjection and the exclusion of the maternal. As Estelle Barrett argues, “Fundamentally, abjection refers to the processes of expulsion necessary for establishing of border between the ‘I’ and the other” (Barret, Estelle. Kristeva Reframed. I.B. Tauris, 2011). In this case, the other is the mother, and the imperative for the child’s self-demarcation begins even before birth. Separating from the mother and turning toward the father leads the child to devalue the mother and, by extension, women in general. Through this abjection of the mother, the child fully self-differentiates and enters the sphere of language, while the mother remains abjected.

Society goes through a similar process. Just as the subject must have an object to establish a stable self, societies also define what constitutes a communal “we” by articulating a definition of “them.” Structuralists such as Lévi-Strauss and Douglas argue that all cultures establish dichotomies to construct a common group identity. For example, as Katherine Goodnow details, “We construct and maintain a sense of personal and social order […] by the distinctions we draw between opposites: self/other, me/not me, living/dead, male/female, infant/child, and citizen/resident” (Goodnow, Katherine. Kristeva in Focus: From Theory to Film Analysis. Berghan Books, 2010). On one hand, establishing group identity and boundaries increases the security and orderliness of the group; abjecting the “other” is a defense mechanism. On the other hand, such thinking leads to despicable social practices such as colonization, racism, and gender discrimination. If a society considers itself “civilized,” then its opposite society must be “uncivilized” or “primitive,” opening itself to colonization and subsummation. As this model suggests, one term in the pair will always be interpreted as superior; the inferior term is excluded or marginalized and overpowered.

Sexual difference, in particular, becomes a site for the abjection of women. Kristeva notes that “strong concern for separating the sexes” results not only in behavioral prohibitions but also in “giving men rights over women” (70). In some religious traditions, women are not even permitted to speak. In 1 Corinthians: 1-34, Paul instructs Christians to prohibit women from speaking in church, saying they must remain silent. In effect, such teachings remove women from the process of signification. Because language creates reality, women in this tradition are excluded from the Symbolic and prevented from meaning-making.

The reasons societies enact such prohibitions, exclusions, and marginalizations are twofold. First, in the case of male/female relations, fear is perhaps the biggest motivator. Kristeva asserts, “Fear of the archaic mother turns out to be essentially fear of her generative power” (77). Women present a threat to men because of their ability to bear children. Likewise, fear of difference in race, gender, and national origin can lead to difficult material conditions for those subjected to exclusion. The second reason that societies reject certain people and ideas is to maintain order by strengthening and maintaining power structures. At their most extreme, societal prohibitions can slide into fascism; further, the exclusion of minorities can reach the level of genocide, as in the case of Nazi Germany. In such unsettled times, there is a strong pull to tamp down abjection brutally. Kristeva’s analysis of Céline suggests such a case. In addition, her examination of the process of abjection, exclusion, and marginalization sets the stage for her final conclusions concerning the role of art and literature in ending oppression.

The Function of Literature and Art in Unveiling the Abject

In the opening chapter of Powers of Horror, Kristeva offers three areas of focus: the analytic theory of abject; the history of religions as the source of prohibitions and taboos safeguarding against the abject; and the abject in contemporary literary and artistic experience. As the book draws to a close, the importance of art and literature becomes increasingly apparent. In this section, she shows how literature and art actively unveil the abject, and she makes clear why such unveiling is necessary in contemporary Western culture.

In Kristeva’s model of psychosexual development, the abject forms the boundary between the Semiotic and the Symbolic phases. Through poetry and literature, that boundary becomes permeable. Kelly Oliver summarizes Kristeva’s argument: “Poetry […] through sounds, rhythm and grammar reactivates the repressed instinctual relation to the maternal. Poetry is the insertion of the maternal into the symbolic” (Oliver, Kelly. “Revolutionary Horror: Nietzsche and Kristeva on the Politics of Poetry. Social Theory and Practice, Fall 1989). That is, Kristeva argues that although the Semiotic has been repressed, it has not been erased; in various ways, the Semiotic upsurges through the border by bringing the abject into the Symbolic world of rules and regulations, into what Lacan and Kristeva would call the law of the father. This is the world of signification, of meaning established through the structure and rules of language. It is the world of grammar and convention. Poetry, on the other hand, according to Kristeva, is a privileged and instinctual form of language; it should not and cannot be omitted from any theory of language. Poetry reveals itself and the abject through its disturbance and undermining of signification—by the way it plays with syntax, grammar, and conventional language. Through the use of metaphor, simile, allusion, synecdoche, and other potent literary devices, poetry is a polyvalent, or many-voiced, form of communication. It implies, hints, and indirectly refers to subject and object, blurring the boundaries between them. Meaning becomes uncertain because poetry can mean many things simultaneously, admitting all and refusing none.

Likewise, in the novels and stories of Céline, Joyce, Borges, and others, Kristeva finds poetic subversion through shattering narrative structure. The rules of punctuation, which in conventional literature provide the guideposts for reading, are violated in abject literature, as are syntax and grammar. In addition, by introducing grotesque images and the uncanny into their work, these writers also unveil the abject. Visual art, encompassing painting, sculpture, and film, also unveils the abject by unpacking “themes that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety particularly referencing the body and bodily functions” (“Abject Art.” Tate Gallery) For example, in “Les Demoiselles D’Avignon,” Picasso portrays naked sex workers shattered and fragmented, their legs spread apart. Similarly, an installation based on objet trouvé (“found art”) might include a toilet, sex toys, and dismembered mannikins. Because such art defies conventional usage of the found item, it intentionally evokes horror and disgust in the viewer. Finally, horror films use the abject extensively in their inclusion of corpses, body parts, blood, and vomit. Some films violate the border between life and death by making the dead walk.

Kristeva writes, “And yet, in these times of dreary crisis, what is the point of emphasizing the horror of being?” (208). The manifold answers to this question found throughout Powers of Horror speak to why unveiling the abject is an important, even necessary, process for Kristeva. She specifically references “these times” from the vantage point of 1980; when she writes Powers of Horror, she recalls two world wars, the Holocaust, the rise of fascism, and atomic bombs. The world in which she writes teeters on the brink of apocalypse. Thus, one purpose served by unveiling the abject through literature and art is that it offers artists and audiences catharsis. Making such art public is, in a sense, a purifying rite. Historically, this has been the role of the church in Western culture. For example, images of the passion of Christ, replete with blood and wounds, or the depiction of tortured and beheaded saints, become sanctified and signified through religious rituals.

Kristeva also cites the importance of literature and art as catharsis in oppressive or fascist cultures: “Even during the most odious of times of the Inquisition, art provided sinners with the opportunity to live, openly and inwardly apart, the joy of their dissipation set into sighs: painting, music, words” (131). The joy is in the catharsis. Medieval manuscript marginalia, often grotesque and sexually explicit, speaks to the insertion of the abject into religious texts that proclaim the law of the father. These artifacts speak to the repressed but not forgotten longing and need for the Semiotic.

In addition, abject art, with its Semiotic aspects, signals a return to the maternal. Acknowledging and accepting the power of the mother is a unifying act for both the individual and society. Likewise, the abject, as a subversive and revolutionary force, undermines current social and Western cultural structures that oppress, exclude, and marginalize women, transgender, queer, Indigenous, non-white, and colonized peoples. Unveiling the abject is a way to fight against such oppression, revealing the insufficiencies of the structures that uphold such culture.

For Kristeva, perhaps the most important reason the abject can and must be unveiled is that it demonstrates courage in the face of suffering, grief, and loss. She believes that Western culture must leave the world of illusion—or religion—simply because there is no choice. As she writes, “We have lost faith in One Master Signifier” (209). In other words, by the end of the 20th century, belief in a god that can provide meaning has become illusory. Likewise, the world endures the “Crisis of the Word” (208). In this, she means “word” as in “Logos,” the Word of God. She believes she is witnessing the end of logocentrism, a period in which people believe meaning can be located in God’s word. In the place of religion and logocentrism, Kristeva finds literature and art filling the void, bridging over the horror of the abject. She writes in a companion volume to Powers of Horror,

Considering the complexity of the signifying process, no belief in an all-powerful theory is tenable; there remains the necessity to pay attention to the desire for language, and by this I mean pay attention […] to the art and literature of our time, which remains alone, in our world of technological rationality, to impel us not toward the absolute but toward the quest for a little more truth […] concerning the meaning of speech, concerning our condition as speaking beings (Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language. Columbia University Press, 1980).

Thus, although for Kristeva absolute truth no longer exists, she nonetheless believes that through unveiling the abject and courageously confronting the apocalypse through literature and art, Western culture can locate contingent and honest truths. Despite horror, suffering, and the grief of innumerable losses, the maternal and the Semiotic can be recuperated, and individuals and the world can be made whole.