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
- 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...