Other works by Julia Kristeva published by Columbia Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art Revolution in Poetic Language In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith Language: The Unknown: An Initiation Into Linguistics ‘Strangers to Ourselves Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia ‘The Samrat 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 LEON S. ROUDIEZ JNSTITUTO DE ARTES BIBLIOTECA UNICAMP. JMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS forkLibrary of Congrest Cataloging-in-Publication Data (European perspectives) ‘Translation of Pouvoirs de Vhorrevr. Columbia University Press New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 1982 Columbis Univesity Press ouvors de Uhorreur © 1980 Editions du Seal Al sghts reserved Printed in the United States of America P 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 © 1098765432 jing Abjection To Be Scared Of g and Horror Females Who Can Wreck the Infinite Ours To Jew ot Die" the Begining and Without End . . fers of Horror 113 133, 140 157 174 188 207 airPROACHING ABJECTION ast is there without glimmer of infin 's0 vile nor abject that brushes not “htning from on high, now tender, now fierce. ‘Vietor Hugo, La Légende des si joms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark re- ‘being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate exorbitant outside or inside, cjected beyond the scope ssible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and esire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be se~ cchensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects. A tects it from the shameful—a certainty of which holds on to it. But simultaneously, just the same, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere e it is condemned. Unflaggingly, like an inescap- ang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the ed by it literally beside himself. _am beset by abjection, the twisted braid of affects Teall by such a name does not have, properly ‘a definable object. The abject is not an ob-ject facing ‘or imagine. Nor is itan ob-jest, an otherness g in a systematic quest of desire. What is abject relative, which, providing me with someone or {as support, would allow me to be more or less. 1d 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