Introducing 

Prezi AI.

Your new presentation assistant.

Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.

Loading…
Transcript

ABJECTION - THE POWERS OF HORROR IN

THE BONE PEOPLE

Abjection is the reaction to a breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of distinction between subject & object...between self & other

Using Julia Kristeva's theory on abjection discuss how, in Keri Hulmes' The Bone People, the theory of abjection has been personified and manifested in Simon

Our physical reaction to abjection:

  • gagging sensation
  • stomach spasms
  • tears
  • bile
  • heart rate increase - forehead and hands perspire
  • nausea

It is "those spasms and vomiting that protect me"

According to Julia Kristeva:

ABJECTION:

Human reaction (vomit, horror) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by a loss of distinction between

subject & object

self & other

According to Kristeva:

Examples of phenomena that trigger ABJECTION

Aspects of humanity that society consider ABJECT:

Bodily wastes

death

murder

decay

perversion

incest

women's bodies

Death infecting life: Abject

The corpose is the ultimate and traumatic reminder

of our own materiality

Psychosexual development...according to Kristeva

It lies there quiet close but can never be

assimilated

The abject is what is jettisoned, ejected, radically

excluded but never banished...it effectively lingers

at the limit....

Simon...

Abject

  • 0-6 months = The Chora/Real Stage
  • 4-8 months = Pre-linguistic stage
  • 6-18 months = The Mirror stage
  • 18 months - 4 years = The Symbolic order
  • Abject marks the moment when we separated from the mother
  • Recognize boundary - "me" and (m)other

  • threat that meaning is breaking down
  • constitutes our reaction to such a break down:
  • reestablishment of our primal repression
  • disturbs identity, system, order
  • does not respect borders, positions, rules

ABJECT

  • eruption of "the Real" stage
  • Kristeva associates such a response with our rejection of deaths insistent materiality
  • Our reaction to abject material re-charges what is a pre-lingual response
  • corpse - literalizes the breakdown of the distinction between object and subject - crucial for the establishment of identity and for our entrance into the "symbolic order"
  • confronted with the corpse = our own eventual death made palpably real

The Abject in/confronting Simon

Observations of other protagonists

Lack of identity

  • seen as abject
  • locals see him as wild
  • affiliated with the devil p115
  • joe beats him - constantly rejecting him p167
  • kerewin - loathes him...hates him p374

Mental Health

  • Irish decent???
  • named Simon yet calls himself Clare
  • Lives in Western, Maori Culture
  • age unknown
  • outsider
  • no real identifiable family
  • gold earring - slavery???

Simon confronts the abject

  • trouble sleeping
  • terrible nightmares p274
  • dark voices locked in his psyche p 5, 175, 205
  • conscious mind represses the horrors
  • boats
  • needles
  • violence
  • death
  • his own voice p 367

Simon's Appearance

physical reaction

  • nausea
  • vomiting p255.
  • Mute
  • Scrawny
  • undersized
  • orphaned
  • body carries scars of abuse
  • found washed up on the shore (discarded, refuse)

Horrific characteristics of

abjection culminate in

"Nightfall"

Begins:

  • dark voices in his psyche rejoicing at the violence Joe is inflicting on Simon
  • Simon - rejected from school
  • Confronted with corpse (nauseated, sick)
  • Kerewin rejects Simon
  • Joe administers final beating
  • Throughout the novel the reader is confronted with the image of flies always present with Simon.

pages:

  • 21
  • 90
  • 288
  • 373
  • 374
  • 376
  • 368-369
  • 496

Ever present reminder that even the flies think of Simon

as a corpse

a living death

death infecting life

AS ABJECT HORROR - THAT

Simon is the archetype of Abjection...

Learn more about creating dynamic, engaging presentations with Prezi