Other works by Julia Kristeva published by Columbia Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art Revol Poetic Language Reader Tales of Love In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysts and Faith Language: The Unknown: An Initiation Into Linguistics ‘Strangers to Ourselves Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia ‘The Samurai ‘Nations Without Nationalism Proust and the Sense of Time ‘The Old Man and the Wolves New Maladies of the Soul ¥ POWERS OF HORROR | An Essay on Abjection ge JULIA KRISTEVA Translated by S. ROUDIEZ INSTITUTO DE ARTES JOTECA UNICAMP UNIVERSITY PRESScor’s Note roaching Abjection 1 \ thing To Be Scared Of 2 | ith to Defilement 56 iotics of Biblical Abomination 90 | Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi 13 iieay oie ine: Neither Actor nor Martyr Bh Merrow Cadre tm Horo w Powers of horror. Females Who Can Wreck the Infinite 187 (Buropean perspectives) urs To Jew or Dic” 174 ‘Tein 6 ‘Pouvoirs de Vhorreur. ‘the Beginning and Without End . . - 188 ine, Louis-Ferdinand, 1894~1961— ers of Horror 207 an (Ceca and nerpeation, 2 Inerature 3. Abjecion in erature Tien Sees. PQacon ESiaznet3 es ona Ba ISBN 0-231-05346-0 AACR st ISBN g7é-o-nrossar Columbia Univesity Pres New York C bickceer, ‘West Sussex: Copyright © 1982 Columbid Us niversity Prost Pouvors de Vhoreur © 1980 Eaitions du Seu P 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1098765432is there without glimmer of infinity, reso vile nor abject that brushes not ining from on high, now tender, now Victor Hugo, La Légende des si SUBJECT NOR OBJECT soms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark re- directed against a threat that secms to emanate fant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite ut it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and esire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be se~ rchensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects. A otcets it from the shameful—a certainty of which hholds on to it. But simultaneously, just the same, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere” ‘25 it is condemned. Unflaggingly, like an inescap- rang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the d by it literally beside himsclé. am besct by abjection, the twisted braid of affects hts I call by such 2 name does not have, properly ‘definable object. The abject is not an ob-ject facing 1 Iname or imagine. Nor is it an ob-jest, an otherness y flccing in a systematic quest of desire. What is abject correlative, which, providing me with someone or ‘as support, would allow me to be more or less autonomous. The abject has only one quality of at of being opposed to I. If the object, however, ‘opposition, settles me within the fragile texture of