Abjection and Representation : An Exploration of Abjection in the Visual Arts, Film and Literature
- Submitting institution
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The University of Huddersfield
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 3
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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10.1057/9780230389342
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- ISBN
- 9780230389335
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- September
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Abjection is a key concept in critical theory and its reach is seen in a number of fields. Most studies do not go beyond Julia Kristeva’s theoretical perspective as expounded in 1980. This study imbeds Kristeva’s conception within a wider perspective by looking at Mary Douglas’ theories of purity and Georges Bataille’s notion of the sacred. The latter is particularly significant because it was Bataille and not Kristeva, who was the first to expound a theory of abjection, in 1934. However, it is Kristeva’s theory that has been adopted as the ur-text. Nonetheless, to have a study of this kind that investigates the roots of abjection vis-à-vis other key thinkers in such a systematic way is highly original. Another unique point about the book is the distinction it draws between abjection (which involves the threat to the boundaries of the self) and disgust (which is configured differently). There is a great deal of overlap between abjection and disgust but they are not the same and the differences have been insufficiently interrogated. After initial theoretical chapters detailing the socio-cultural and anthropological roots of abjection, the remaining chapters concentrate on the application of ideas concerning abjection to the visual arts, film and literature. The fact of the prevalence of abjection within aesthetic disciplines conveys the ambivalence of the concept. We are attracted to abjection even though it brings about a sense of horror. The interdisciplinarity of this approach is important because it conveys the overlapping features seen in these different fields, such as the disintegration of symbolic language and the presence of the bodily.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
