Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

“Unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the one haunted by it literally beside himself.”

Kristeva begins her discussion of abjection by poetically describing the simultaneous attraction to and rejection of the abject, using a simile to compare these conflicting emotions to a boomerang. She goes on to distinguish how the abject is neither subject nor object, although it stands in opposition to the “I.”

“Refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live. These bodily fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty on the part of death. Therefore I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border.”

The cadaver confronts the speaking subject with its being/not being status. It disrupts the integrity of the subject because it reminds them of the fragile boundary between life and death. This is the abject at its extreme disruptiveness; it threatens to completely undo the living, speaking subject. Kristeva builds emphasis here through italics and swearing—the word “shit” is particularly unusual in an academic context.

“It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that creates abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite. The traitor, the liar, the criminal with good conscience, the shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a savior.”

Kristeva lists all the forms of the abject takes, using a series of sentence fragments to deepen her characterization. In that it disturbs all social structures, the abject is dangerous. It can cause the disintegration of not only the social structure but also the individual identity. The erasure of borders threatens life itself.