power of horror an essay on abjection

Site Content

Powers of horror.

An Essay on Abjection

Julia Kristeva. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez

Columbia University Press

Pub Date: February 2024

ISBN: 9780231214575

Format: Paperback

List Price: $24.00 £20.00

Shipping Options

Purchasing options are not available in this country.

Pub Date: March 2024

ISBN: 9780231561419

Format: E-book

List Price: $23.99 £20.00

• EPUB via the Columbia UP App
• PDF via the Columbia UP App

Dazzling. SubStance

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. Peter Connor, Barnard College

Critics who seek an alternative to sexist and, in general, imperialist practices in psychoanalytic writing will want to read [this book]. Discourse

About the Author

• Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Theory
• European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Powers of horror : an essay on abjection

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

2,232 Previews

116 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

EPUB and PDF access not available for this item.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by DeannaFlegal on April 21, 2009

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

• Literature & Fiction
• History & Criticism

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: $24.00

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Other Sellers on Amazon

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism) Paperback – February 13, 2024

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Part of series European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
• Print length 248 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Columbia University Press
• Publication date February 13, 2024
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
• ISBN-10 023121457X
• ISBN-13 978-0231214575
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press; Reissue edition (February 13, 2024)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 023121457X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0231214575
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
• #74 in Hispanic American Literary Criticism
• #1,156 in Medical Psychoanalysis
• #1,627 in Popular Psychology Psychoanalysis

About the author

Julia kristeva.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Start Selling with Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

• Literature & Fiction
• History & Criticism

Buy new: $31.00

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video, download Flash Player

Follow the author

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection Paperback – Feb. 13 2024

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Part of series European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
• Print length 248 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Columbia University Press
• Publication date Feb. 13 2024
• Dimensions 13.97 x 1.91 x 21.59 cm
• ISBN-10 023121457X
• ISBN-13 978-0231214575
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product description

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press; Reissue edition (Feb. 13 2024)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 023121457X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0231214575
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 322 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 1.91 x 21.59 cm
• #4 in Hispanic American Literary Criticism
• #270 in Psychoanalysis (Books)

About the author

Julia kristeva.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Reviews with images.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon and Our Planet
• Investor Relations
• Press Releases
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Sell on Amazon Handmade
• Advertise Your Products
• Independently Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• Amazon.ca Rewards Mastercard
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon Cash
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns Are Easy
• Manage your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Customer Service
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Interest-Based Ads
• Amazon.com.ca ULC | 40 King Street W 47th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5H 3Y2 |1-877-586-3230

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• History of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• History of Art
• Theory of Art
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• History by Period
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Linguistics
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• History of Religion
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cultural Studies
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Criminal Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business History
• Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Browse content in Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Institutions and Services
• History of Economic Thought
• Browse content in Education
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Environment
• Browse content in Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Regional and Area Studies
• Browse content in Sociology
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Reviews and Awards
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

• < Previous
• Next chapter >

Introduction: approaching abjection

• Published: July 2016
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

‘Abjection’ is a word with a long history in the English language. In The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology its use is traced back to the fifteenth century. At that time, someone who had been brought low, rendered despondent or dejected for whatever reason, was referred to as abject. The term assumed its more familiar meaning of being degraded or despicable in the sixteenth century. Its etymological roots are to be found in the Latin word abicere meaning to cast away or rebuff. In contemporary cultural theory, however, the term ‘abjection’ is commonly associated with the psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva. 1 In 1980, Kristeva published Pouvoirs de l’horreur: Essai sur l’abjection ( Kristeva, 1980). The book was swiftly translated into English, appearing in 1982 as Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection ( Kristeva, 1982). It notably preceded the English-language translation of Kristeva’s ground-breaking Revolution in Poetic Language which was published in French in 1974 ( Kristeva, 1974) but only translated into English in 1984. Powers of Horror provided the English-language reader with the first monograph (rather than collection of essays) by Kristeva and subsequently profoundly shaped the Anglophone reception of her work.

Signed in as

Institutional accounts.

• Google Scholar Indexing
• GoogleCrawler [DO NOT DELETE]

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code

Institutional access

• Sign in with a library card Sign in with username/password Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Sign in through your institution

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Sign in with a library card

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

• study guides
• lesson plans
• homework help

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection - Chapter 1, Approaching Abjection Summary & Analysis

Chapter 1, Approaching Abjection Summary and Analysis

In this chapter, Kristeva gives what she calls a "phenomenological" account of the abject. This means that Kristeva begins her investigation by relating and describing her own personal experience of the abject in order to give the reader (and herself) a better understanding of it. One of the chief features of the abject is its ambiguity. It is somewhere between being an object and not being an object. However, it should be noted that this has nothing to do with the abject itself; there is not something about the abject which makes it into a "pseudo-object" as Kristeva says. Rather, classifying something as an object or not an object is something that is done through the language of the subject (that is, of the person). A person relates to his or her world through language and therefore...

(read more from the Chapter 1, Approaching Abjection Summary)

FOLLOW BOOKRAGS:

The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Spotlight on … Julia Kristeva Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1979)

‘Every year around Halloween—near the first of October, really, as I like to have a whole month for this—I tend to re-read old ghost stories by the like of M.R. James, folk tales of British corpse ways, and historical non-fiction about vampires from the Balkans. Halloween makes for a grand excuse for becoming immersed in things gothic, the dark and gloomy for a whole month or better. This year, I decided to focus on a less common but equally apt work in the canon of horror: the linguist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva’s classic work on abjection, Pouvoirs de l’horreur (Powers of Horror). Kristeva’s objective in this book-length essay is to address the role of abjection as a psychosocial property and a literary device. Coming from her background as a practicing psychoanalyst and also a pioneering linguist who wrote her Dr. d’État dissertation on the semiotic development of the early European novel, no one appears better poised than Kristeva to address this topic and she does a magesterial job. To me, the concept of a nuanced essay that explains via both theory and example the mechanisms of abjection in literature is something not only quite useful to the scholar but something that has been missing from how general scholarship of gothic literature, film noir, and a variety of other genre have been commonly approached.

‘Kristeva defines the abject as “To each ego its object, to each superego its abject. It is not the white expanse or slack boredom of repression, not the translations and transformations of desire that wrench bodies, nights, and discourse; rather it is a brutish suffering . . .”. She continues on this motif further explicating in poetic terms her vision, but the core point has been made: within the Lacanian framework, the abject is a central waypoint on the definition of the relation of the personal ego with the greater world; it is not just the presence of disgust or horror, but that entire gamut of suffering we encounter.

‘Kristeva later notes that “The abject is, for Dostoyevsky, the ‘object’ of The Possessed: it is the aim, and motive of an existence whose meaning is lost in absolute degradation because it absolutely rejected the moral limit (a social, religious, familial, and individual one) as absolute—God.” Therefore the abject is the fulcrum, it is that which we use as our compass of moral regulation by default. It is knowing when you’ve had too much to drink, or when someone is not a person you wish to invite to your party. However, it does not end there: the abject is also the horrors that via their totality and catastrophic nature cause a sense of awful wonder. A rocket hitting a multi-floor apartment tower, a bridge that fails and falls—cars, people, and all—into a cold river below, these are all things that are abject. When human design and the intent of malice come into play, the situation is even more dire and often more horribly enchanting. There is a photo from a school video camera of Columbine killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris stalking through the school with weapons in hand that I have seen republished in multiple articles about their murderous rampage: why should we tolerate seeing this, much less wish to see it? What is the draw of the obscene? It represents the horror: it shows us the murderers beyond any question of their acts or their evil nature. When we hear a ship has sunk, we wish to see the abject act—a ship, verily sinking—not an empty ocean of its aftermath.

‘Kristeva opens Powers of Horror with a general overview of what she means by the term “abjection” and how the “abject” and the process of “abjection” differ, plus a slight introspection into the history of the abject as a sociocultural phenomenon—covering with strong insight such aspects as how early Christian mystics delighted in the abject and how the concept of self-abuse and piety evolved in part from their views of abjection. Kristeva is careful to clarify the differences between the grotesque and the abject and how the abject can share in the material corpus of things that cause disgust but also transcends such a base emotional reaction. Working from there, she approaches a variety of oftentimes surprising literary examples, such as the works of Louis-Ferdinand Céline and through these works places the apex of the literary interest in the abject to run alongside the same timeline as the romantic era focus on the sublime and further into the modern era focus on psychological realism. As in her dissertation years before, Kristeva is highly adept at capturing all the verve of the carnival and grotesque in a write such as Céline plus the depth and scope of the variform abject she locates in literature.

‘Kristeva further delineates her view of the abject as “that experience, which is nevertheless managed by the Other, “subject” and “object” push each other away, confront each other, collapse, and start again—inseparable, contaminated, condemned, at the boundary of what is assimilable, thinkable: abject. Great modern literature unfolds over that terrain: Dostoyevsky, Lautreamont, Proust, Artaud, Kafka, Celine.”

‘What Kristeva demonstrates in her overall approach to the modern period is that these writers belong to a trajectory of acceptance of vileness alongside virile aggression and accelerated lack of confidence in a faith-based, morality-regulated society. We perhaps easily forget now how even Spinoza and Kierkegaard, who are considered essential to secular philosophy today, wrote within the guise of religion. They lived, after all, in a world of feast days, fast days, civil accord revolving around things holy while all that was not holy remained in civil discord unseen. Kristeva points to the abject as not however the absence of something—not, in example, famine due to a lack of harvest—but the precise presence of a matter of disgust or a means of arriving at disgust.

‘According to Kristeva, Jorge Luis Borges before her has already defined the abject and abjection—though not in those express words—as key to the crucial drive of all literature. Kristeva describes Borge’s declared objective of literature as “vertiginous and hallucinatory”, all tales told are after all “narratives of the infamous” and with Borges leitmotif of noir and reliance on the detective story’s tropes, abjection is rife in his works. Yet abjection does not negate hope: abjection, Kristeva explains, is the realization of disgust and the ability to process something from the point of being disgusting, repulsive, to the complexity of horror. While animals can be repulsed by something—a decaying corpse, in example—their response to such an incident is predicated on disgust more than horror. For the human, horror quickly pushes simple disgust out of the picture: a corpse unexpectedly encountered may be disgusting, but soon the primary raw emotion is one of horror and fear: why is there a dead body here, where it is unexpected? Is this a murder? Is the killer still on the loose? Could I be the next victim?’ — Mike Walker

____ Further

Julia Kristeva Official Site Julia Kristeva @ Twitter The Kristeva Circle Introduction to Julia Kristeva, Module on the Abject how to not mean what we can’t say ‘The Body Politic of Julia Kristeva’, by Judith Butler A Bulgarian “portrait” of Julia Kristeva Body/Text in Julia Kristeva: Religion, Women, and Psychoanalysis Julia Kristeva : “L’humanisme ne sait pas accompagner la mortalité” Correcting Her Idea of Politically Correct Julia Kristeva: The Berlin interview! Semanalysis. Engendering the formula Give Birth or Write: Julia Kristeva Lectures on Feminist Philosophy THE NEED TO BELIEVE AND THE ARCHIVE: INTERVIEW WITH JULIA KRISTEVA Embodied Language: Julia Kristeva’s Theory of Poetic Language and Tantric Buddhism According to Reggie Ray Julia Kristeva ON THE MELANCHOLIC IMAGINARY Julia Kristeva’s Maternal Passions Head Cases: Julia Kristeva on Philosophy and Art in Depressed Times Podcast: Julia Kristeva interviewed by Umberto Eco Buy ‘Powers of Horror’

_____ Extras

_____ Interview

DONATIEN GRAU — You’ve just published a book in which you return to the question of time. Why come back to it now? JULIA KRISTEVA — We’re living at a time when time itself has never been more problematic. They say we’re at the end of time, the thermonuclear and ecological apocalypse at the end of History. And at the same time we are at the beginning of time — since with one “click” we are now able to access information pertaining to all of History. How should we react when time can be performed in this way? The answer is: we ceaselessly experience new beginnings, over and over. Time does not pass, it does not stop, it just keeps on starting over again and again. As Chairman Mao once said, you count on yourself alone. In counting on yourself, yourself is not in itself an identity, nor is it a personality or an individuality. It’s the ecceitas of John Duns Scotus, the “this,” the demonstrative pronoun that has the ability to rebound. It’s a permanent resurrection. On the condition, again, that you are able to create connections, which is not possible unless the motor of this personal pronoun is the connection of love, the transfer. This is how I understand Freud’s message: It all starts again with the transfer, you begin again. Besides, the goal of psychoanalysis is to help people create connections based on this initiatory new beginning, which initializes the transfer.

DONATIEN GRAU — For you the encounter is very important. JULIA KRISTEVA — Who encounters whom? Because an encounter is a dual thing: I go to meet people, who have in turn chosen to come to meet me. The first people I met were Roland Barthes and then, through him Gérard Genette, who directed me to Philippe Sollers. This moment of germination was very important. At that time, Barthes was trying to explain that truth as a word is not taboo. I had read some of his writings, not much. When I attended their lectures, Genette and Barthes would ask me what I wanted to do, would ask about my thoughts on structuralism and Russian formalism. For me it felt a little out of date, because Mikhail Bakhtin had just been discovered, placing ideology in lieu of the subject and history in meaning. I was asked to give a talk about it at 44 rue de Rennes, where Barthes was giving his lectures. So whether I liked it or not, I positioned myself as the ancestor of post-structuralism by introducing two dimensions: subjectivity in language, and history through context, discussing how the novel as a genre emerged through carnival and religious texts. And in doing that, we breathed new life into semiology, taking it away from Ferdinand de Saussure, trying to build an interpretation of human practices other than Marxism, which reduces the meaning of history and the placement of individuals into production or reproduction. Neither Freudism nor Marxism, but the positioning of individuals in the flow of language. I also collaborated with the linguist Emile Benveniste. His theory of language seemed relevant to me because he was combining these two dimensions, which I then tried to translate into psychoanalysis. I do not use the word “semantics” and prefer to use “semiotics,” which is more oriented toward impulses and the unconscious, and “symbolism,” which returns us to the triangular meaning of the language sign: signifier, signified, referent.

DONATIEN GRAU — But since your work is also extremely contemporary, what is the contemporary meaning of these debates from the end of the ’60s and from the early ’70s? Is it still a distant landscape? JULIA KRISTEVA — I think we are now experiencing a major repression, which corresponds to what I consider a weak moment of civilization. A weak moment in the civilization of the book, due to the explosion of the image with all the advantages it may bring — speed, fascination, communication — but also major toxicity. It is indeed the opium of the people: here I am sitting in front of my television, my computer screen, my iPhone, calming me and lulling me to sleep. We are living under the influence of various opiates. At the same time, in terms of language, there is the development of this hyper-connected, rapid web, most conducive to the homo horizontalis, thus diminishing the vertical dimension, which is the interior experience, the inner self, the psychic life. When it doesn’t wipe it out completely, it wipes out what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the flesh, a word I use in my own way: the flesh of the world, of language, of subjectivity. I call this particular dimension an asymbol, because through image, the web, and our hyper-connection, a censure of the essence of language is manifested, which doesn’t mean just one thing, but rather stands as a polyphony, a polysemy (a diversity of meaning). And this polysemy, because of the toxicity and rapidity, is reduced to utilitarian communication. The eradication of the depth of the sign and its polysemy is a terrible deficiency, a defect, carrying us far from the curiosity we used to have. Yet this curiosity persists as it did in the low times, in closed communities: university spaces, symposia, conferences, research in general. Here I am playing devil’s advocate, because it’s an invisible dimension in social life today — a discredited dimension, but one which I think exists. It often takes the form of microscopic or abstruse research, but it may well have general consequences if we are capable of approaching it in depth and translating it for greater communication.

DONATIEN GRAU — Your revolutionary ideal was also very much part of the way you conceived your action back then… JULIA KRISTEVA — Back, then, the revolutionary idea was still very much alive. Today, I think it is best embodied in the word “revolt.” When I arrived in France and found myself surrounded by young people interested in political revolution, I thought it was a whim, a passing fancy of the young bourgeois, and I interpreted it as a desire to know, an archaeological approach, including the Communist world. This is why we, along with Philippe Sollers, launched a study of Chinese civilization. We needed to appropriate the enigmas that surrounded us intellectually: knowing the past, where it comes from, that sense of tradition. And regarding China, which is often a problem when we are speaking of our “revolutionary” pasts, we would ask ourselves: is there a Chinese socialism, and if so, what does it look like? The real question was to determine if there is a Chinese individual. To all appearances, no, because he belongs either to a clan or to the Tao — he is diffused somewhere inside the flux of the world and social connections. His adaptability matters, not his identity. But inside this structure there is the positioning of the two sexes in Taoism. It is the beginning of a reflection on the role of the woman, which is very important in Chinese civilization, thus facilitating the consideration of psychic bisexuality.

DONATIEN GRAU — You mentioned psychoanalysis earlier, which seems to be an important form of knowledge for you. JULIA KRISTEVA — Psychoanalysis is a form of awareness, but certainly not of knowledge. In Bulgaria, I knew the work of Russian formalists, I knew quite a bit about philosophy, but I did not know that much about psychoanalysis, because the training we had there at the post-doctoral level was oriented toward Hegel and phenomenology, but not at all toward Freud. On the other hand, my father, who was an extremely cultivated man, had the only translation of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, which was hidden in his library and which we didn’t show to others, because Freud was considered bourgeois science. So I knew very little about psychoanalysis, but Sollers took me to Jacques Lacan’s classes. I was pretty lost, fascinated by his rather surrealistic presence. I did however realize, as I was preparing my thesis on the avant-gardes, that the language I was dealing with, that of Mallarmé or Lautréamont, with its densities and its esoteric side, could not be interpreted only with the tools of stylistics, grammar, phenomenology, or structuralism, that instead I would have to approach it based on the experience of the subject, his or her construction and deconstruction in and through writing. I would need to confront episodes of depression or psychosis, which these people experienced in solitude or as part of revolutionary movements, for example in Lautréamont’s relationship to the Paris Commune. The result was that I decided I’d better get into analysis. I needed to do it to see it from the inside, hunkering down inside the alchemy of the verb, on the couch, and in French.

DONATIEN GRAU — Your work, from the 1980s onward, on the analysis of the states of the soul, seems very relevant today. JULIA KRISTEVA — It seems to have had more echoes abroad than in France. I discussed feminine sexuality at lengths: I engaged again with the issues related to maternity, which except in a few rare texts, had been abandoned by the feminists. Feminists from Simone de Beauvoir’s generation were extremely wary of maternity, which they perceived as a form of slavery, the submission of the woman to the paternal phallus, etc. In doing so, they pushed aside a fundamental experience in the lives of women, and limited themselves politically, as well. Maternal eroticism is far from being halcyon. We may have ecstatic moments which facilitate the transmission of sensitivity and language, but there are also moments of extreme violence: the expulsion of the child, the child separating from his or her mother, the mother relating to the child, all sorts of trauma. Which is when I created this notion of abjection, for this time when one is not yet a subject, when there is not yet an object. In this interspace, there is both repulsion and fascination. This idea, which of course comes from psychoanalysis, helped me when I was approaching borderlines states, for example, the characters of Céline, his style, and his way of being, which for me were horrifying.

DONATIEN GRAU — You’ve never stopped redefining three domains: the question of the subject, feminist theory, and issues of love. JULIA KRISTEVA — I have been deconstructing and reconstructing them for years, but based on personal experience, running up against places that are obscure or not sufficiently developed in Freudian and feminist theory. They now seem to be recognized as neuralgic points, especially in terms of language, meaning, and difference. They also became flash points, targets, not only in terms of erudite thinking, where my question is personal, epistemological — but also in terms of social connections.

DONATIEN GRAU — Which brings us to the question of politics, because your relationship with it is definitely skewed. You are not in the newspapers, but you seem often to take sides. How do you see your role as an intellectual in politics? JULIA KRISTEVA — It’s difficult to say because I’m not a media-oriented person. In general, the intellectual is supposed to fertilize or place himself in the political field through the media, and many of them do. I do not feel I can do that. I’m not hysterical enough, in the positive sense of the word — meaning I don’t have the exuberance, the glibness, and the ability to seduce, or the conviction to do it. I’m more about being discreet and precise. And I’m not into political commitments either, because being committed means having a cause for which to fight. I think that the role of intellectuals is to detach themselves from any affiliation, to escape any temptation to ally themselves, to remain tangential — while not choosing isolation either.

‘ 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.’ — CUP

‘Kristeva is one of the leading voices in contemporary French criticism, on a par with such names as Genette, Foucault, Greimas and others. . . 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 paraphilosophical modes of discourse. The sections on Céline, for example, are indispensable reading for those interested in this writer and place him within a context that is both illuminating and of general interest.’ — Paul de Man

_____ Excerpt

No Beast is there without glimmer of infinity, No eye so vile nor abject that brushes not Against lightning from on high, now tender, now fierce. Victor Hugo, La Legende des siecles

NEITHER SUBJECT NOR OBJECT

There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects. A certainty protects it from the shameful — a certainty of which it is proud holds on to it. But simultaneously, just the same, that impetus, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned. Unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the one haunted by it literally beside himself.

When I am beset by abjection, the twisted braid of affects and thoughts I call by such a name does not have, properly speaking, a definable object . The abject is not an ob-ject facing me, which I name or imagine. Nor is it an ob-jest, an otherness ceaselessly fleeing in a systematic quest of desire. What is abject is not my correlative, which, providing me with someone or something else as support, would allow me to be more or less detached and autonomous. The abject has only one quality of the object—that of being opposed to I. If the object, however, through its opposition, settles me within the fragile texture of a desire for meaning, which, as a matter of fact, makes me ceaselessly and infinitely homologous to it, what is abject, on the contrary, the jettisoned object, is radically excluded and draws me toward the place_where meaning collapses. A certain “ego” that merged with its master, a superego, has flatly driven it away. It lies outside, beyond the set, and does not seem to agree to the latter’s rules of the game. And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master. Without a sign (for him), it beseeches a discharge, a convulsion, a crying out. To each ego its object, to each superego its abject. It is not the white expanse or slack boredom of repression, not the translations and transformations of desire that wrench bodies, nights, and discourse; rather it is a brutish suffering that, “I” puts up with, sublime and devastated, for “I” deposits it to the father’s account [verse au pere—pere-uersion] : I endure it, for I imagine that such is the desire of the other. A massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which, familiar as it might have been in an opaque and forgotten life, now harries me as radically separate, loathsome. Not me. Not that. But not nothing, either. A “something” that I do not recognize as a thing. A weight of meaninglessness, about which there is noth- ing insignificant, and which crushes me. On the edge of non- existence and hallucination, of a reality that, if I acknowledge it, annihilates me. There, abject and abjection are my safe- guards. The primers of my culture.

THE IMPROPER/UNCLEAN

Loathing an item of food, a piece of filth, waste, or dung. The spasms and vomiting that protect me. The repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, and muck. The shame of compromise, of being in the middle of treachery. The fascinated start that leads me toward and separates me from them.

Food loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection. When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of milk—harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as a nail paring — I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire. Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. “I” want none of that element, sign of their desire; “I” do not want to listen, “I” do not assimilate it, “I” expel it. But since the food is not an “other” for “me,” who am only in their desire, I expel myself , I spit myself out , I abject myself within the same motion through which “I” claim to establish myself . That detail, perhaps an insignificant one, but one that they ferret out, emphasize, evaluate, that trifle turns me inside out, guts sprawling; it is thus that they see that “I” am in the process of becoming an other at the expense of my own death, During that course in which “I” become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. Mute protest of the symp- tom, shattering violence of a convulsion that, to be sure, is inscribed in a symbolic system, but in which, without either wanting or being able to become integrated in order to answer to it, it reacts, it abreacts. It abjects.

The corpse (or cadaver: cadere , to fall), that which has irre- mediably come a cropper, is cesspool, and death; it upsets even more violently the one who confronts it as fragile and fallacious chance. A wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death. In the presence of signified death—a flat encephalograph, for instance — I would understand, react, or accept. No, as in true theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I perma- nently thrust aside in order to live. These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border. Such wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss, nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit— cadere , cadaver. If dung signifies the other side of the border, the place where I am not and which permits me to be, the corpse, the most sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything. It is no longer I who expel, “I” is expelled. The border has become an object. How can I be without border? That elsewhere that I imagine beyond the present, or that I hallucinate so that I might, in a present time, speak to you, conceive of you—it is now here, jetted, abjected, into “my” world. Deprived of world, therefore, I fall in a faint . In that compelling, raw, in- solent thing in the morgue’s full sunlight, in that thing that no longer matches and therefore no longer signifies anything, I behold the breaking down of a world that has erased its borders: fainting away. The corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life. Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us.

It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes 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 a good con- science, the shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a savior. . . . Any crime, because it draws attention to the frag- ility of the law, is abject, but premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are even more so because they heighten the display of such fragility. He who denies morality is not abject; there can be grandeur in amorality and even in crime that flaunts its disrespect for the law—rebellious, liberating, and suicidal crime. Abjection, on the other hand, is im- moral, sinister, scheming, and shady: a terror that dissembles,* a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for barter instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sells you up, a friend who stabs you.*. . .

In the dark halls of the museum that is now what remains of Auschwitz, I see a heap of children’s shoes, or something like that, something I have already seen elsewhere, under a Christmas tree, for instance, dolls I believe. The abjection of Nazi crime reaches its apex when death, which, in any case, kills me, interferes with what, in my living universe, is supposed to save me from death: childhood, science, among other things.

THE ABJECTION OF SELF

If it be true that the abject simultaneously beseeches and pulverizes the subject, one can understand that it is experienced at the peak of its strength when that subject, weary of fruitless attempts to identify with something on the outside, finds the impossible within; when it finds that the impossible constitutes its very being , that it is none other than abject. The abjection of self would be the culminating form of that experience of the subject to which it is revealed that all its objects are based merely on the inaugural loss that laid the foundations of its own being. There is nothing like the abjection of self to show that all abjection is in fact recognition of the want on which any being, meaning, language, or desire is founded. One always passes too quickly over this word, “want,” and today psychoanalysts are finally taking into account only its more or less fetishized product, the “object of want.” But if one imagines (and imagine one must, for it is the working of imagination whose foun- dations are being laid here) the experience of want itself_as logically preliminary to being and object—to the being of the object—then one understands that abjection, and even more so abjection of self, is its only signified. Its signifier, then, is none but literature. Mystical Christendom turned this abjection of self into the ultimate proof of humility before God, witness Elizabeth of Hungary who “though a great princess, delighted in nothing so much as in abasing herself.”

The question remains as to the ordeal, a secular one this time, that abjection can constitute for someone who, in what is termed knowledge of castration, turning away from perverse dodges, presents himself with his own body and ego as the most precious non-objects; they are no longer seen in their own right but forfeited, abject. The termination of analysis can lead us there, as we shall see. Such are the pangs and delights of masochism.

Essentially different from “uncanniness,” more violent, too, abjection is elaborated through a failure to recognize its kin; nothing is familiar, not even the shadow of a memory. I imagine a child who has swallowed up his parents too soon, who frightens himself on that account, “all by himself,” and, to save himself, rejects and throws up everything that is given to him— all gifts, all objects. He has, he could have, a sense of the abject. Even before things for him are —hence before they are signifiable—he drives them out, dominated by drive as he is, and constitutes his own territory, edged by the abject. A sacred configuration. Fear cements his compound, conjoined to another world, thrown up, driven out, forfeited. What he has swallowed up instead of maternal love is an emptiness, or rather a maternal hatred without a word for the words of the father; that is what he tries to cleanse himself of, tirelessly. What solace does he come upon within such loathing? Perhaps a father, existing but unsettled, loving but unsteady, merely an apparition but an apparition that remains. Without him the holy brat would probably have no sense of the sacred; a blank subject, he would remain, discomfited, at the dump for non-objects that are always forfeited, from which, on the contrary, fortified by abjection, he tries to extricate himself. For he is not mad, he through whom the abject exists. Out of the daze that has petrified him before the untouchable, impossible, absent body of the mother, a daze that has cut off his impulses from their objects, that is, from their representations, out of such daze he causes, along with loathing, one word to crop up—fear. The phobic has no other object than the abject. But that word, “fear”—a fluid haze, an elusive clamminess—no sooner has it cropped up than it shades off like a mirage and permeates all words of the language with nonexistence, with a hallucinatory, ghostly glimmer. Thus, fear having been bracketed, discourse will seem tenable only if it ceaselessly confront that otherness, a burden both repellent and repelled, a deep well of memory that is unapproachable and intimate: the abject.

BEYOND THE UNCONSCIOUS

Put another way, it means that there are lives not sustained by desire , as desire is always for objects. Such lives are based on exclusion . They are clearly distinguishable from those under- stood as neurotic or psychotic, articulated by negation and its modalities, transgression, denial , and repudiation . Their dynamics challenges the theory of the unconscious, seeing that the latter is dependent upon a dialectic of negativity.

The theory of the unconscious, as is well known, presupposes a repression of contents (affects and presentations) that, thereby, do not have access to consciousness but effect within the subject modifications, either of speech (parapraxes, etc.), or of the body (symptoms), or both (hallucinations, etc.). As correlative to the notion of repression , Freud put forward that of denial as a means of figuring out neurosis, that of rejection (repudiation) as a means of situating psychosis. The asymmetry of the two repressions becomes more marked owing to denial’s bearing on the object whereas repudiation affects desire itself (Lacan, in perfect keeping with Freud’s thought, interprets that as “repudiation of the Name of the Father”).

Yet, facing the abject and more specifically phobia and the splitting of the ego (a point I shall return to), one might ask if those articulations of negativity germane to the unconscious (inherited by Freud from philosophy and psychology) have not become inoperative. The “unconscious” contents remain here excluded but in strange fashion: not radically enough to allow for a secure differentiation between subject and object, and yet clearly enough for a defensive position to be established—one that implies a refusal but also a sublimating elaboration. As if the fundamental opposition were between I and Other or, in more archaic fashion, between Inside and Outside. As if such an opposition subsumed the one between Conscious and Un- conscious, elaborated on the basis of neuroses.

Owing to the ambiguous opposition I/Other, Inside/Outside—an opposition that is vigorous but pervious, violent but uncertain—there are contents, “normally” unconscious in neu- rotics, that become explicit if not conscious in “borderline” patients’ speeches and behavior. Such contents are often openly manifested through symbolic practices, without by the same token being integrated into the judging consciousness of those particular subjects. Since they make the conscious/unconscious distinction irrelevant, borderline subjects and their speech constitute propitious ground for a sublimating discourse (“aes- thetic” or “mystical,” etc.), rather than a scientific or rationalist one.

p.s. RIP Paul Reubens. Of all the recent famous deaths, this is the saddest one for me. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Brains are so great, especially when you’re asleep. Or on psychedelics. Your weekend sounds very nice indeed. Mine was nice, saw friends, worked a little, no big, but no small either. I have crush on your yesterday’s love. Love giving the person in charge of our film project truth serum, G. ** Charalampos, ‘Landscape Suicide’ is fantastic. Obviously I support your film idea. Mm, all of Gisele’s and my older works are fully documented, but I don’t think any of the videos are available publicly. Her decision. The ‘Jerk’ film is on DVD and online, but you’ll never see the ‘Jerk’ play. It’s a dead duck. After8 is easily one of the greatest treasures that Paris has. If it wasn’t closed for its summer break right now, I’d go over there today. Happy almost new week. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi. I’m having to deal with a bunch of shit, but I’m okay. So sorry about the recent personal things, and the hospital time, but I’m glad all is well. ‘Duelle’ is really strange and luscious, I think. Funny you mention Kate Bush since I just saw on social media that it’s her birthday today. Yes, I like her, of course. I like that you find Bauhaus and Cocteau Twins interchangeable. I saw a friend yesterday who told me they tried to get their 8 year old son into Bauhaus and that it didn’t work. Wonderful, wonderful Tuesday in its entirety to you. ** _Black_Acrylic, Go, Japan! Okay, I’m on board the Japan cheerleader squad. That is really great news about the writing class restarting! Jonesing for some new Robinson prose, buddy. ** Montse, Hi!!! Gare de Nord, cool, that’s easy. It’s hard to say how busy we’ll be on the film when you’re here, We could be, but we could also easily be in between work spurts. In any case, I’ll have plenty of time to see you and hang out, for sure. Hopefully our amazing non-summer weather/ temperature will still be doing its pleasant thing then. Yay!!! ** Steve Erickson, Learning ropes is a gift. Well, or can be. Either the person we work with to do the sound mix and design will have their own studio or will work in a professional studio, yes. The guy who did our first two films and who we really hope to work with on this film if we can scrounge up some money somehow has a great little studio on the canal. ‘LA VISA DE CENSURE NO. X’ is a serious trip, highly recommended. ** Darby (just Darby), Hi. Whatever kindness I evinced was automatically pulled out of me by Scully. Did you wake up to him fully in tact and ready to scare/amaze? I’m so sorry about the woman’s death. Yes, very sad about Sinead O’Connor. My social media feed was basically all Sinead all the time for about four days. I’m okay. A bunch of shit with our film producer, but that’s tragically normal. Unless I have amnesia, I’m not DB Cooper, unfortunately. But I guess if I have amnesia, it wouldn’t matter since the loot’s location would be a mystery to me as well. ** Gray_gary, Ha ha, cool, thanks, G_g! ** Right. Today I turn the blog’s spotlight function onto an ultra-seminal book by the one and only Julia Kristeva. Read it? Want to? Don’t want to? Etc. See you tomorrow.

Uncategorized

August 1, 2023 at 12:37 pm

I watched Pee-wee’s Big Adventure this morning in honour of Paul Reubens. My favourite film as a kid and I’m happy to report that it still holds up.

August 1, 2023 at 4:59 pm

“Fully Established:> An interesting turn of Phrase, I used to read quire a bit of Kristev and Sollers in “Tel Quel”

August 1, 2023 at 6:42 pm

Agreed. Just the other day, I told Anita how much I felt like taking some shrooms and just letting my brain do its thing. Of course, I didn’t have any, so this urge is yet to be fulfilled.

I’m currently reading a pretty mediocre fantasy book (it was recommended to me; I hardly ever read fantasy), and there was a scene where the main character stabbed a beautiful blond boy with a unicorn horn to make him tell the truth. Maybe it’d work with the person who’s in charge of your film.

Love unable to believe that Angus Cloud died, Od.

Hi D.! Awesome! We’ll see how busy you are when the time comes. Fingers crossed for the nice weather too. It’s awful here. I’ll pop in next week or so. Nice Kristeva day! Take care xxx

August 1, 2023 at 8:43 pm

Hey! The gloomy raincloud that was lingering over my head finally dispersed, so I’m back to sunshine and rainbows (for a little while at least.) Brain chemistry… weird huh. I hope life and love treated you well in my brief absence. Other than my improved mental state, I don’t really have a lot to report. I’m currently working on a choose-your-own-adventure story that I’d intended to keep pretty short, but, looking at my copious notes, charts and diagrams… well, it may be getting a bit too bloated and complicated for that. Fun, though. Oh! I also fisted a guy for the first time. So that was a cool experience. Thank the gods for talented bottoms. Whatever you get up to today Dennis, I hope you enjoy it. Love, me.

August 1, 2023 at 10:40 pm

Hi Dennis. How are you? I’m ok. I’m terribly sorry you’re going through something. Here’s to hoping it gets better. Thank you for this early Halloween present. It certainly looks interesting. I’m a big spooky story person so I’m very interested in this. Thank you for the well wishes. Everything is ok for now, thankfully. I think I really am going to try Duelle later tonight. I love Kate Bush as well. Was a bit peeved to see so many people finally listen to her from Stranger Things, as I think she’s a much more talented and gifted performer than that. My favorite albums of hers are Never for Ever and The Dreaming. I love the dark fantasy, medieval vibes she conjures up on those records. I like to view Bauhaus and Cocteau Twins as attractive opposites I suppose. I tend ti listen to Bauhaus when I feel a bit broodish and angry, and I listen to Cocteau Twins when I want to feel comfort or euphoria. I never get tired of Bauhaus. In the Flat Field and The Sky’s Gone Out are extraordinary, as is Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Well nothing much is happening on my end. Watched a Ghost Adventures episode on the Westerfeld House, where Kenneth Anger lived and shot Invocation of My Demon Brother. Those kind of programs are fun. They try way too hard, but it’s hard not to get engaged in my opinion. I’ll also watch anything related to Anger or Anton LaVey. Might rewatch Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow tonight before Duelle. Haven’t seen it since a disastrous screening I did for some friends. It’s not a movie you want to show to a group, as it’s very slow. Wonderful score in it! Might also listen to more Cocteau Twins since I’m aiming for that kind of mood tonight. Would you say Cocteau Twins and Duelle match? Have a great day or night, Dennis!

August 2, 2023 at 5:22 am

~Telegram circa 1800 (because nothing really cool happened today but I’m feeling bored and creative)

Yes!! I am on a metaphorical yet simultaneously physical voyage sailing on The M.S Beagle. (Yes Charles Darwin is here and yes I can confirm that barnacles are a curse to mankind) What kind of voyage? Hhmm. I don’t know. I think I’m trying to find something. But something I will find!! Are you doing better today? Im quite seasick, sorry. I think the storm has settled and I can see the beautiful sky!! Im not high I promise haha! Ok so this telegram will probably take a bit to send but um u have pigeons right? Yes I remember the pigeons! If all goes well the pigeons will knock their lil beaks on your window and give you this letter. It will be a bit until the second letter comes, but I will tell you the amazing things I discover! -D

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\🌊🚢🌊/\/\/\/\/\/\🐳/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ /\/\/\/\ /\/\/\/\ /\/\/\/\

August 2, 2023 at 2:08 pm

So weird, I’ve posted the past two days but comments are not showing up. I even double post and get the message that I’ve done a duplicate comments. Hmm. What’s going on? Eek.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Paperback available now

* ‘I Wished’ @ goodreads

* Dennis Cooper Gets Personal

* Dennis Cooper : Cet obscur objet de l’écriture (J’ai fait un vœu)

* Podcast: La Grande Table critique: Littérature : “J’ai fait un vœu” de Dennis Cooper

* La fin du Cycle de George Miles

* On I Wished by Dennis Cooper, by Ted Rees

* Podcast: Dennis Cooper : “J’ai tendance à penser que la confusion, c’est la vérité”

* Dennis Cooper, à George déployé

* on symbiosis and the welcome limitation of collaboration: an interview with dennis cooper

* „I’m an experimenter“: Ein Interview mit Dennis Cooper

* Paradis pour George Miles : dialogue entre Dennis Cooper et Olivier Steiner à propos de ‘J’ai fait un vœu’

* Dennis Cooper in conversation with Ryan Mangione @ November Magazine

* “Artists On Writers | Writers On Artists”: Dennis Cooper and Ryan Trecartin in conversation

* DC interviewed about I WISHED by Paul Bomer @ FULLSTOP

* Podcast: DC is the guest on Jesse Pearson’s APOLOGY

* Dennis Cooper’s Teenage Spirit @ Frieze

* Dennis Cooper’s Love Story of a Lifetime @ The Nation

* An Elusive Wish: A Conversation with Dennis Cooper @ LARB

* Podcast: OTHERPPL 742. Dennis Cooper

* Best Books of the Year @ Bookforum

* CURRENTS, AN INTERVIEW SERIES WITH BRIAN ALAN ELLIS (EPISODE 61: DENNIS COOPER)

* LIBRI VIOLENTI SU RAGAZZI ROTTI: Conversazione con Dennis Cooper

* Pornografischer Schlachthof der Romantik: I Wished von Dennis Cooper

* ‘I WISHED’ BY DENNIS COOPER: SERVING WITNESS

* Difficulty Is My Drug of Choice: An Interview with Dennis Cooper @ SWR

* ‘I Wished’ reviewed by Jeremy Lybarger @ 4Columns

* Podcast: Dennis Cooper: “I Wished” @ Bookworm

* I Wished Is One of Dennis Cooper’s Most Vulnerable and Enigmatic Books Yet

* Dennis Cooper: “I’ve Never Written a Book That’s Personal Like This Before” @ AnotherMag

* PW Picks: Books of the Week

* I WISHED reviewed by Golnoosh Nour @ queerguru

* The Best Books to Read This Fall @ Vogue Magazine

* Dennis Cooper interviewed by Richard Hawkins @ Interview Magazine

* Podcast: Dennis Cooper – I Wished @ Wake Island

NOW : ZAC’S DRUG BINGE, a gif novel (Kiddiepunk Press)

Now viewable VOD worldwide @ Vimeo

* NOW : The New Inquiry : Final Fantasy: Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts in the time of social distancing

* NOW : Thompson’s Live: S6 Ep6 (podcast, 17th April 2020): DC in conversation w/ Chris Goode

* Dennis Cooper Resource

* Gisele Vienne

* Permanent Green Light

* Like Cattle Towards Glow

* Zac’s Coral Reef

* Zac’s Freight Elevator

* Zac’s Control Panel

* Zac’s Haunted House

* Dennis Cooper @ Editions POL

* Dennis Cooper @ Harper Collins

* Dennis Cooper @ Grove Press

Recent Posts

• Bill Hsu presents … early 80s/90s San Francisco post/ art/ punk/ noise * April 12, 2024
• Rocks April 11, 2024
• Ghost “Town” : A Brief History of 40 Acres, California (1926-1975) * April 10, 2024
• Spotlight on … Violette Leduc Thérèse and Isabelle (1965) April 9, 2024
• 63 cutaway illustrations April 8, 2024

© 2024 DC's

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑

• Architecture and Design
• Asian and Pacific Studies
• Business and Economics
• Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Computer Sciences
• Cultural Studies
• Engineering
• General Interest
• Geosciences
• Industrial Chemistry
• Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Library and Information Science, Book Studies
• Life Sciences
• Linguistics and Semiotics
• Literary Studies
• Materials Sciences
• Mathematics
• Social Sciences
• Sports and Recreation
• Theology and Religion
• Publish your article
• The role of authors
• Promoting your article
• Abstracting & indexing
• Publishing Ethics
• Why publish with De Gruyter
• How to publish with De Gruyter
• Our book series
• Our subject areas
• Your digital product at De Gruyter
• Contribute to our reference works
• Product information
• Tools & resources
• Product Information
• Promotional Materials
• Orders and Inquiries
• FAQ for Library Suppliers and Book Sellers
• Repository Policy
• Free access policy
• Open Access agreements
• Database portals
• For Authors
• Customer service
• People + Culture
• Journal Management
• How to join us
• Working at De Gruyter
• Mission & Vision
• De Gruyter Foundation
• De Gruyter Ebound
• Our Responsibility
• Partner publishers

Your purchase has been completed. Your documents are now available to view.

“Approaching Abjection,” from Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

From the book classic readings on monster theory.

• Julia Kristeva
• X / Twitter

Supplementary Materials

Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product.