Carolina English

In this piece, I attempt to render myself an object and create the feeling of abjection (coined by Julia Kristeva). When talking about abjection, people often talk about the abject as a place where meaning collapses. It exposes the fabricated structures of meaning and humanity’s part in this meaning’s formation.

People create the constructs of meaning and meaning wields people into objects. To be an object does not mean to be without life. To be an object is to be defined by some exterior force. Objects are never just objects but are signs that symbolize their owner – a collection and ordering of surrounding definitions, associations, and ideas. The person defines the abject but the abject also defines the person. People are constructed by what they wish not to be. In result, the abject is what defines a person, shaping them into objects.

Abjection exposes this process. It is the abject that turns this meaning onto itself. However, we cannot exist without meaning, so we expel the abject and, with it, the threat of a crumpling world. This reflex response is abjection. The repulse feeling of abjection – the horror and dread felt when encountered with the abject, defines our lives. Or rather, avoiding it defines our lives.

Kristeva recognized that it is how people shape the abject that drives their lives. We write our own rules – rules meant to avoid the abject at all costs. And, inversely, our rules are what feed the abject, providing a platform to shift every structure thought to be axioms in our lives. “It’s not the lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, and order. Waste, bile, corpse, and filth; they all disrespect the order of the living. We repel them away from us because we deny that their existence is what gives us life.” When faced with the abject, meaning is torn down and we are forced to reanalyze why this meaning was established in the first place.

For

University of Pennsylvania

Date

Fall 2015