Georgescu Rocsana-Elena British Cultural Studies, 2nd year

Powers of horror- Julia Kristeva Ch.3 From filth to defilement

Mother-phobia and the murder of the father

-Freud tied the sacred to taboo and totemism: we consider ourselves justified in substiting the father for the totem animal in the males formula of totemism -Moses and Monotheism- the archaic father and master of the primavel horde is killed by the conspiring sons, who, afterwards, feeling guilty for their deed, restore paternal authority -Freud- morality of man starts with the two taboos of totemism: murder (of the father) and incest (dread of incest connected to food and sex prohibitions) -Kristeva- attempts to question the dread, incest and mother, the other side of the religious phenomenon The two-sided sacred -sacred= a two-sided formation? -one aspect founded by murder and the social bond made up of murders guilt-ridded atonement; defensive and socializing -second aspect- more secret and invisible, oriented towards fragility, to those uncertain spaces of unstable identity; shows fear and indifferentiation -aim: discussion of discourses and rituals that involve dealing with defilement, and its derivations in various religions, and incest Prohibited incest vs. Coming face to face with the unnamable -feminine= an other without a name, the solid rock of jouissance and writing -a different version of the confrontation with the feminine, an ecstatic one Narcissus and murky waters -Freud- taboo= sacred, consecrated; means uncanny, dangerous, forbidden and unclean -the object of taboos: the prohibition mostly concerns matters that are capable of enjoyment
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Georgescu Rocsana-Elena British Cultural Studies, 2nd year

-paternal subject prohibits, separates, prevents contat between son and mother =>idyllic dual relationship mother-child which changes into an aversion of incest -Freud refers states of fear and impurity to primary narcissism, laden with hostility and not knowing its limits Incest and the pre-verbal -in the beginning was the deed (Freud) - the outside is elaborated by means of a projection from within, of which the only experience we have is of pleasure and pain -non-distinctiveness of inside and outside is unnamable, a border passble by pleasure and pain -naming the outside => introduction of language -the murder of the father, on the level of the subjective of each individual is the advent of language, which sets up denomination as an exchange of linguistic signs -Three essays on the theory of sexuality (Freud)- autoeroticism= phase which gives way to objectchoice; the object being the ego -fixation at this tage= narcissism; the ego of primary narcissism is uncertain, fragile, threatened, subjected to spatial ambivalence (inside/outside) and to ambiguity of perception (pleasure and pain) Defilement as ritual rescue from phobia and psychosis -abjection- threatens the ego and results from the dual confrontation in which the uncertainties of primary narcissim reside, may explain the incest dread - incest prohibition veils the primary narcissism and the ambivalent threats that menace the subjective identity -rituals of defilement, based on the feeling of abjection, attempt to symbolize the other threat to the subject: of being swamped by the dual relationship; function to ward off the subjects fear of his own identity sinking into the mother The poverty of prohibition: Georges Bataille -G. Bataille- linked the production of the abject to the weakness of that prohibition, which constitutes each social order -abjection linked to the inability to assume with sufficient strength the imperative act of excluding -plane of abjection: the subject/object relationship; archaism rooted in anal eroticism rather than sadism
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Georgescu Rocsana-Elena British Cultural Studies, 2nd year

-this relationship interprets the one to the mother (abject- decisive role of procreation for the survival of the social group, endogamy) -the demoniacal potential of the feminine threatens ones own and clean self The fundamental work of MARY Douglas -filth, sacred defilement, is the excluded -purification rites- to separate social, sexual, or age group from one another, by means of prohibiting a filthy element; by prohibiting the filthy object, they extract it from the secular order and lines it with a sacred facet -defilement- what escapes social rationality, logical order -Mary Douglas- the human body= the prototype of the translucid being consituted by society as symbolic system -defilement= a metaphor of the socio-symbolic being constituted by the human universe always present to itself In the same fashion as incest prohibition -defilement is, for a social aggregate, only one of the possible foundings of abjection borgering the frail identity of the speaking being -abjection= universal phenomenon; it assumes specific shapes and codes according to various symbolic systems: defilement, food taboo, sin The margin of a floating structure -filth applies only to what relates to a boundary and represents the object jettisoned out of that boundary (spittle, blood, milk, urine, faeces, tears) -why does corporeal waste, menstrual blood and excrement represent the objective frailty of symbolic order? Between two powers -ritualization of defliment is accomapanied by a strong concern for separating the sexes=> giving men rights over women -two powers who try to share society -masculine: victotious, relentlessness against the other -feminine- threatened by an asymmetrical, irrational, uncontrollable power
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Georgescu Rocsana-Elena British Cultural Studies, 2nd year

Excrements and menstrual blood -polluting objects: excremental and menstrual; tears or sperm, although belonging to the borders of the body, have no polluting value -excrements (decay, infection, disease, corpse)- danger to identity that comes from without (ego threatened by the non-ego, life by death) -menstrual blood- danger issuing from the inside; threatens the identity of each sex in the face of sexual difference Maternal authority as trustee of the selfs clean and proper body -two defilements stem from the maternal and/or the feminine, of which the maternal is the real support Defilement rite- a social elaboration of the borderline patient? -sacrifice- solemnizes the vertical dimension of the sign, the one that leads from the thing that is left behind, to the meaning of the word and transcendence -defilement rites shift the border that separates the bodys territory from the signifying chain -defilement= translinguistic spoor of the most archaic boundaries of the selfs clean and proper body A scription without signs -rites are acts rather than symbols; they have a material, active, translinguistic, magical impact Pollution by food-a compound -orality signifies a boundary of the selfs clean and proper body -food= abject only if its a border between two distict entities and territories (nature and culture, human and non-human) The remainder: defilement and rebirth - remainders are residues of something but especially of someone; they pollute on account of incompleteness -there is residue in every system (cosmogony, food ritual, sacrifice) which deposits ambivalent remains Fear of women- fear of procreation -fear of generative power Defilement and endogamy in India
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Georgescu Rocsana-Elena British Cultural Studies, 2nd year

-Dumont- the endogamy in castes is only a consequence of the initial hierarchic principle based on the opposition pure/impure -endogamy- having the individual marry within his group; in Indian castes: the passing on of membership in the group by both parents at the same time Marriage or loathing? -hierarchic principle is jointly based on two logical principles: the separation exemplified by the dichotomy of the pure and teh impure, and the maintaining of a balance between the two sexes through endogamy Hierarchy and nonviolence -the pure/impure opposition represents the striving for identity, a difference; it replaces the violence of sacrifice with the ritual of purification -hierarchy is constitutive of Hindu man, but it is rooted by two prime shifts: the sign (solemnized by sacrifice), sexual difference (regulated by marriage) Oedipus the king of invisible abjection -the fate of Oedipus displaces the mythical defilement that situates impurity on the untouchable other side, within the corporeal border and, basically, within the mother woman (the myth of natural fullness) -spatial exclusion and exclusion from sight (he blinds himself- castration) -bliding-image of splitting Pharmakos the ambigous -Oedipus= a being of abjection, a scapegoat who, having been ejected, allows the city to be freed from defilement -defilement= incest considered as traasngression of the boundaries of what is clean and proper Purification at Colonus A challenge to abjection: the symbolic pact

Georgescu Rocsana-Elena British Cultural Studies, 2nd year