Abject Research Articles

National and Racial Abjection of the Hybrid Adoptee in Elizabeth Kim’s Ten Thousand Sorrows

National and Racial Abjection of the Hybrid Adoptee in Elizabeth Kim’s Ten Thousand Sorrows

Performatividad y lenguaje de odio: expresiones de la homosexualidad masculina en la ciudad de Cali

Este documento analiza los discursos de siete varones autorreconocidos como homosexualesen la ciudad de Cali en los que se refieren a la visibilización de la homosexualidad y susconsecuencias. Se toma distancia de la posibilidad de explicar dichos discursos a partir deuna “homofobia interna” o de una práctica de “endodiscriminación”, y se recurre al análisisperformativo propuesto por la filósofa norteamericana Judith Butler, basado en trescategorías de análisis: alegorías, reglas (explícitas e implícitas) y deseo/aversión. A partirdel análisis de las afirmaciones de los participantes, se concluye que el lenguaje de odioes una sucesión de actos performativos que constituye sujetos idealizados, a la vez quereafirma una masculinidad deseada pero amenazada, que permite defenderse de la supuestapersecución de la abyección sexual que amenaza la heteronormatividad, y que también darienda suelta a un fuerte componente de deseo homoerótico inmerso en tales discursos.

Performing the Imperial Abject: The Ethics of Cocaine in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four

The Journal of Popular CultureVolume 45, Issue 5 p. 979-999 Article Performing the Imperial Abject: The Ethics of Cocaine in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four Benjamin D. O'Dell, Benjamin D. O'DellSearch for more papers by this author Benjamin D. O'Dell, Benjamin D. O'DellSearch for more papers by this author First published: 24 September 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2012.00969.xCitations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume45, Issue5October 2012Pages 979-999 RelatedInformation

Carnival of the Abject -Focused on Crimes of the Heart-

Carnival of the Abject -Focused on Crimes of the Heart-

Institutions, identity and insanity: abject spaces in Shutter Island

Julia Kristeva's 1982 account of abjection usually has connections with cinema in relation to the horror film, a genre in which scenes of blood and death feature prominently, exemplifying some of the threats to subjectivity that constitute the abject. In contrast, this paper locates abjection in the filmic institution, where challenges to subjectivity arise through spatial restriction, extreme control or mental illness, and invariably lead to visual chaos and narrative disorder. These traits seem universal to the American institution film – the ‘institution film’ being, for the purposes of this paper, one in which the institution is central to narrative organisation. Indeed, such patterns of transgression appear regularly throughout the genre's well-established history, being conspicuous in high-security settings. It is therefore relevant to diverge from typical Foucauldian analyses of the institution to a theoretical model that centres on the implications of repression. Kristeva's 1982 theory of abjection provides such a model, which this paper utilises to explain how fictional institutions affect subjectivity. This paper argues that as sites of extreme control, such institutions become abject spaces, abjection manifesting within both the mise-en-scène and cinematography. In relation to the asylum, abjection further emerges in the nature of mental illness. Referring to Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010), I correlate abjection with the loss of identity that the film's protagonist experiences, considering how abjection visually manifests in the physical spaces of the asylum, and propels the narrative trajectory forward.

The Ambivalence in the Abject : Focused on Getting Out by Marsha Norman

The Ambivalence in the Abject : Focused on Getting Out by Marsha Norman

Abject citizens: Italian ‘Nomad Emergencies’ and the deportability of Romanian Roma

In May 2008, Berlusconi's newly elected coalition introduced new measures to facilitate the expulsion and repatriation of European community citizens, simultaneously declaring a ‘State of Emergency with regards to the Settlement of Nomadic Communities in Lazio, Campania and Lombardy Regions’. Through an analysis of these laws and their material effects, this article will show how they constituted Romanian Roma as abject European citizens. In the process, it will argue that this process of abjection was dependent on earlier processes that first categorised the Roma as ‘nomads’ and relegated them to the abject space of the ‘nomad camp’. The article will conclude by arguing that the constitution of the Roma as abject citizens does not only occur through the act of expulsion, but through the condition of deportability induced by the threat of expulsion.

Suspicion

Suspicion

“Give the People What They Want”: Bodies on Display in Marlene Van Niekerk’s Triomf

Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf has attained both literary acclaim and notoriety since it was first published in Afrikaans in 1994 (English translation 1999). This darkly comic novel is set at the dawn of the democratic election and as such, the fictional context mirrors the historical moment in which it was published. The novel relates the misadventures of the incestuous and indigent Afrikaans family, the Benades, whose grotesque bodies are described in minute detail. The paper examines the reason for this visceral corporeality in the context of Louise Bethlehem’s classification of the post-apartheid literary canon as one “in which the abject body is a privileged trope.” During apartheid, relationships were governed by racist laws, stereotypes, and perceptions (rather than intimate conversations or reciprocal interactions). Van Niekerk explores this dominance of the visual in encounters with others, and in the process unpacks the “ensemble of practices” which made up what Allen Feldman calls the apartheid “scopic regime.” Van Niekerk enquires whether looking at the other could potentially facilitate empathy and understanding, or whether this remains merely an act of voyeurism. In this regard, the paper examines the meaning of the motif of binoculars and peepholes in Triomf, and argues that the Benades’ thwarted desire for connection and empathy is enacted through the visual medium. The reader, too, acts as literary voyeur, yet in this manner begins to care for and empathize with the Benades. In conclusion, Van Niekerk’s visceral descriptions should not be classified as merely sensationalist or exhibitionist. Rather they represent an ethical intervention and an attempt to explore the formation of intimate relationships which, for Van Niekerk, are always mediated by the body.

The Suspicious Figure of the Female Forensic Pathologist Investigator in Crime Fiction

The Suspicious Figure of the Female Forensic Pathologist Investigator in Crime Fiction

Abjection and the Cinematic Cholo

Abjection and the Cinematic Cholo

The Abjection of The Mother/Colonial Country in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John

The Abjection of The Mother/Colonial Country in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John

Beyond Abject Spaces: Enterprising Zimbabwean Diaspora in Britain

AbstractThe concept of space in relation to the experiences of African immigrants in Britain has been the focus of recent geographical and development studies with Joann McGregor’s notion of abject spaces the most provocative. This paper considers how the concept of abject spaces can be extended beyond the existence of the marginal, illegal and undocumented immigrants to explore opportunities for entrepreneurship within and beyond these spaces. Based on observation and in-depth interviews with forty entrepreneurs in the same Zimbabwean immigrant community studied by McGregor, the paper demonstrates connections between the businesses formed to serve abject spaces as well as the ways in which living in the same abject space stimulates entrepreneurship. Abject spaces are simultaneously business spaces in ways that demonstrate the innovation and agency of immigrants and the connections between abject spaces and both the country of origin and host community spaces. This contributes to a better understanding of contemporary migration especially the temporality or space-time dimension of abjection and the significance of small immigrant enterprises in Britain.1

The Aesthetics of Abjection and Dying

The Aesthetics of Abjection and Dying

The Picture of Abjection: Film, Fetish, and the Nature of Difference by chanter, tina

<i>The Picture of Abjection: Film, Fetish, and the Nature of Difference</i> by chanter, tina

Toward a Neo-Cubist Alamkara Movement in a Reality-Programmed Theatre Near You

When I first started writing electric and hysteric operettas1 with punk bands down in Austin, Texas, I tried to draw what I thought language could sound like onstage. I came up with the illustration “Back of the Dollar Latin” because I was worried about how the new dollars were getting simplified and clearer and harder to fake. I liked the strange secrets lurking all over the old dollars and the packing in of symbols and overwrought curlicues. And I thought it was possible to banish that horrible sound of actors projecting their voices into abject space and to have other things coursing through the voice, like emotional vibrato and cry pitches3 and raging vampyre fugues,4 and so forth. I thought words could erupt in a kinetic stage combat of dialogue and I proceeded to write madcap barroom brawls5 and martial arts operas6 and black box recordings of classic disasters.7

'Fragilization and Resistance' and 'Neighborhood and Shechina'

Com-passion involves transformational affects, and among them these major three: primary fascinance (that precedes or is in parallel to fascinum and might counter-balance control and submission by its transformational value), primary compassion (that precedes and might counter-balance abjection and abandonment), and primary awe (that might counter-balance shame and fear). These affects are primordial accesses to the other and to the Cosmos. Through them the other and the Cosmos do not turn into objects - their dynamic difference is preserved during cognizing. By way of these affects, the subtle human subjectivizing processes and the early positions are not "schizophrenic-paranoid". To be a subject without turning the other and the Cosmos into an object ― that is the question.

Architecture and Abjection in Nicole Garcia's Place Vendôme

During the murky, symphonically swelling opening of Nicole Garcia's Place Vendome (1998), the viewer discerns statuary in an antique style, the spirited figures sooty, their activities ambiguous, t...

Abject spaces, transnational calculations: Zimbabweans in Britain navigating work, class and the law

Opportunities for migrants in Britain have become increasingly differentiated by hardened legal barriers, restricted access to asylum and filtering by selected skills. This article explores the effects of this differentiation on diaspora formation, social mobility and class identities. It takes the case of one of the UK's largest new African migrant groups – black Zimbabweans – who mostly come from middle class/elite backgrounds, but who have ended up in unskilled and informal work, as well as securing professional posts in Britain. The article asks whether, and in what sense it might be useful to talk of the polarised opportunities created by legal status in terms of emerging class differences and challenges to class identities. It dwells on the subjective experience of those in irregular legal circumstances, whose loss of status in Britain has been particularly acute, drawing on theoretical debates on abjection and dehumanised ‘bare life’ that speak directly to the popular discourses and language in which those doing menial work and lacking papers spoke about their experiences and place in Britain. As some have, however, maintained their class position both at home and in intergenerational terms, the article highlights the transnational calculations that continue to render even illegal unskilled work in the UK attractive, and underlines the importance of discussing abjection in terms of the relations of power and processes that create legal spaces of exclusion rather than as a putative underclass. Notwithstanding such calculations, the article highlights the importance of legal status and inequality within migrant groups in shaping the dynamics of new diaspora communities in Britain.

‘Signs I Don't Understand’: Language and Abjection in Molloy

‘Signs I Don't Understand’: Language and Abjection in <i>Molloy</i>