Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (European Perspectives) (European Perspectives Series)

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We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Psychoanalytic thinkers would likely locate the problem somewhere in that zone where the sexual overlaps with the parental, aka "the ick field.

Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on para-philosophical modes of discourse. Kristeva's one of the greatest scholars of her generation, and she could—and should—mine this fascinating yet oft-overlooked topic of abjection further. Julie Kristeva’s Powers of Horror is a massively important text for any scholar interested in horror or the abject.Freudianism is indeed omnipresent here; as a result, some of the author's concepts sound at the very least far-fetched when compared to her otherwise clever approach - especially to the Judeo-Christian religion(s) and Scriptures. But what batter subject than one whose relationship to waffles commplicates the clean subject/object structure of selfhood and communication, both sides implicit with auto-destruction? If differentiation is the most fundamental act of cognition, then maybe our first such act is noticing the difference between mom-is-here and mom-is-not-here (but not our complicated idea of "mom," just a warm food-source presence filling eyes and mouth). Kristeva in this book exposes the tenuously constructed and easily dismantled nature of the self and takes the reader to a place outside of the cultural security of linguistic definitions of societal being, a place where markers of certainty can disappear and everything is in a state of flux. Labai gera pradžia, kur iškart aiškinama abjekcija, ir kiek tas veiksmas apima, tiksliau, kaip ir iki kiek Kristeva ją išplečia.

But you'll more than likely be goaded into a second reading anyway by Kristeva's fucking gorgeous writing. In Pouvoirs de l'horreur Kristeva explores abjection, a condition which is fundamental in the formation of identity, where the "abject" subject acts in a transgressive revolt of the Oedipal (sexual) identity and of the sexual specificity.Other times, such as her own works of fiction, she's quite lackluster and some of her scholarship on the social psychology of contemporary Europe seems like overly obvious observations cast into florid language.