Powers Of Horror (an Essay On Abjection)

By (author) Kristeva, Julia; Translated by Roudiez, Leon
Short description/annotation:
Julia Kristeva offers an extensive and profound consideration of the nature of abjection. Drawing on Freud and Lacan, she analyzes the nature of attitudes toward repulsive subjects and examines the function of these topics in the writings of Celine, Proust, Joyce, and other authors.
Description:
In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva offers an extensive and profound consideration of the nature of abjection. Drawing on Freud and Lacan, she analyzes the nature of attitudes toward repulsive subjects and examines the function of these topics in the writings of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and other authors. Kristeva identifies the abject with the eruption of the real and the presence of death. She explores how art and religion each offer ways of purifying the abject, arguing that amid abjection, boundaries between subject and object break down.
Table of contents:
Translator''s Note
I. Approaching Abjection
2. Something to Be Scared Of
3. From Filth to Defilement
4. Semiotics of Biblical Abomination
5.... Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi
6. Céline: Neither Actor nor Martyr
7. Suffering and Horror
8. Those Females Who Can Wreck the Infinite
9. "Ours to Jew or Die"
10. In the Beginning and Without End...
11. Powers of Horror
Notes
Index
Review quote:
Dazzling.
Review quote:
Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror, which theorizes the notion of the ‘abject’ in a series of blisteringly insightful analyses, is as relevant, as necessary, and as courageous today as it seemed in 1984.
Review quote:
Critics who seek an alternative to sexist and, in general, imperialist practices in psychoanalytic writing will want to read [this book].
Biographical note:
Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”