Critical study of Julia Kristeva’s

concept of Abjection

By Aneequa Erum
III Sem | MFA (AH&AA)
Background on the author
● Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian- French psychoanalyst, literary critic,
novelist, and educator
● She has been an influential figure in French feminism as well as
in structuralist and post-structuralist schools of thought
● Contributions to psychoanalysis: the semiotic and the symbolic
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection
● First published in 1980
● One of Kristeva’s best-known works and one of the leading
interpretations of abjection
Abjection
● “Abjection” = the human reaction to the collapse of the
subject into the object
● Meaning in the symbolic order depends upon the distinction
between subject and object
● When we experience a trigger that threatens this distinction,
we are confronted with a breakdown of meaning
● Kristeva's understanding of the "abject" provides a helpful
term to contrast to Lacan's "object of desire"
● Kristeva's variations on a Lacanian theme.

● 0-6 months of age. Kristeva refers to this stage as the chora.he chora strikes the subject with
fear and horror because it means giving up all the linguistic structures by which we order our
social world of meaning.

● 6-18 months of age. This stage, which Lacan terms the "mirror stage,"

● 18 months to 4 years of age. The acquisition of language during this next stage
of development further separated you from a connection to the Real
Giovanni Bellini
Madonna and Child, c. 1480/85 Giovanni Bellini
Oil on panel, 53.7 x 42.5 cm (21 1/8 x 16 3/4 in.) Madonna and Child, c. 1510
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Samuel H. Kress Oil on panel, 68.9 x 73 cm (27 1/8 x 28 3/4
Collection
References

https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabje
ct.html
https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabj
ect.html

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-reformation/early-renaissance1/ve
nice-early-ren/a/giovanni-bellini-brera-pieta

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-reformation/early-renais
sance1/venice-early-ren/a/giovanni-bellini-brera-pieta