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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.〔J. Childers/G. Hentzi eds, ''The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism'' (1995) p. 1〕 Among the most popular interpretations of abjection is Julia Kristeva’s, (pursued particularly in her work ''Powers of Horror'') which describes the subjective horror one, and therefore one’s body, experiences when one is confronted with what she terms one’s “corporeal reality,” or a breakdown in the distinction between what is self and what is other.〔Fletcher & Benjamin, "Abjection, melancholia and love: The work of Julia Kristeva" (2012), p. 93〕 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. 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” (ref needed). 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. 〔Fletcher & Benjamin, "Abjection, melancholia and love: The work of Julia Kristeva" (2012) p. 92; Oliver, "Psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and politics in the work of Kristeva" (2009)〕 ==In literary critical theory== Drawing on the French tradition of interest in the monstrous (e.g., novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline),〔Geoffrey Brereton, ''A Short History of French Literature'' (1954) p.246〕 and of the subject as grounded in filth (e.g., psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan),〔Jacques Lacan, ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis'' (1994) p. 258〕 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.〔Julia Kristeva, ''Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection'' (1982) p. 65〕 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.〔Childers/Hentzi, p. 308〕 It is important to note, however, that Kristeva created a distinction in the true meaning of abjection: it is not the lack of “cleanliness or health” that causes abjection, but that which disturbs identity, system, and order.〔Kristeva, "Powers of Horror", p. 4; Guberman, "Julia Kristeva Interviews", (1996)〕 Since the abject is situated outside the symbolic order, being forced to face it is an inherently traumatic experience, as with the repulsion presented by confrontation with filth, waste, or a corpse — an object which is violently cast out of the cultural world, having once been a subject.〔(Julia Kristeva, 'Approaching Abjection' )〕 Thus the sense of the abject complements the existence of the superego - the representative of culture, of the symbolic order:〔Kristeva, p. 15〕 in Kristeva's aphorism, "To each ego its object, to each superego its abject".〔Kristeva, p. 2〕 From Kristeva's psychoanalytic perspective, abjection is done to the part of ourselves that we exclude: the mother. We must abject the maternal, the object which has created us, in order to construct an identity.〔 Abjection occurs on the micro level of the speaking being, through their subjective dynamics, as well as on the macro level of society, through "language as a common and universal law". We use rituals, specifically those of defilement, to attempt to maintain clear boundaries between nature and society, the semiotic and the symbolic, paradoxically both excluding and renewing contact with the abject in the ritual act.〔Barbara Creed, in Ken Gelder, ''The Horror Reader'' (2000) p. 64〕 The concept of abjection is often coupled (and sometimes confused) with the idea of the uncanny, the concept of something being "un-home-like", or foreign, yet familiar.〔Childers/Hentzi, p. 1〕 The abject can be uncanny in the sense that we can recognize aspects in it, despite its being "foreign": a corpse, having fallen out of the symbolic order, creates abjection through its uncanniness〔Winifred Menninghaus, ''Disgust'' (2003) p. 374〕 — creates a cognitive dissonance. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Abjection」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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