Abjection

The term abjection literally means "the state of being cast off." While in common usage it has connotations of degradation, baseness and meanness of spirit, the term has been explored in post-structuralism as that which inherently disturbs conventional identity and cultural concepts. Among the most popular interpretations of abjection is Julia Kristeva's (pursued particularly in her work Powers of Horror). Kristeva describes subjective horror (abjection) as the feeling when an individual experiences, or is confronted by (both mentally and as a body), what Kristeva terms one's "corporeal reality", or a breakdown in the distinction between what is self and what is other. The concept of abjection is best described as the process by which one separates their sense of self – be that physical and biological, social or cultural – from that which they consider intolerable and infringes upon their 'self', otherwise known as the abject. The abject is, as such, the "me that is not me."

Kristeva's concept of abjection is utilized commonly and effectively to explain popular cultural narratives of horror and misogyny, and builds on the traditional psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

Drawing on the French tradition of interest in the monstrous (e.g., novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline), and of the subject as grounded in filth (e.g., psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan),Julia Kristeva developed the idea of the abject as that which is rejected by/disturbs social reason – the communal consensus that underpins a social order. The "abject" exists accordingly somewhere between the concept of an object and the concept of the subject, representing taboo elements of the self barely separated off in a liminal space. Kristeva claims that within the boundaries of what one defines as subject – a part of oneself – and object – something that exists independently of oneself – there resides pieces that were once categorized as a part of oneself or one's identity that has since been rejected – the abject.

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