Julia Kristeva and the Abject

Julia Kristeva argues that the abject is not an object opposite the ego, but it is that part of the subject rejected by the superego. It is the rejected part of being which exists alongside the subject. Kristeva grounds the abject in the pre-object phase of separation from the mother:

"Abjection preserves what existed in the archaism of pre-objectal relationship, in the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to be" (10).

The abject is an instance of the failure of the symbolic to organize experience. The examples of the abject that Kristeva finds in twentieth century writers are related to an uncovering of a breakdown in the symbolic order, a passing away of stable meaning. She points out that Dostoyevsky's abject is found in both murder and suicide; for Proust it is in the proximity of the sounds of sex and death, the inevitability and uncleanliness of sexual intercourse. These are proximities of boundaries; these boundaries replicate the one between the self and other. Kristeva calls it "boundary-subjectivity," and credits twentieth century writers with the disruptions of narrative that reveal the abject. While Kristeva doesn't exactly celebrate the abject, she calls attention to its ability to reveal "the bankruptcy of the fathers" (172).