• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.19-30
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• 2002

This is the research of Abject Art which was originated aesthetically in Abjection Theory of Julia Kristeva, a french psycho-analyst who argued liberational discussions about feminine identity against patricentric ideology which had fastened existing beautiful and elegant oedipal-feminine image and femininity as the secondary sex or the other's sex. and which became known by the planning display at whitney Museum of American in 1993. In Julia Kristeva's Abjection Theory which was written in her book(Power of Horror : An Assay on Abjection, 1992), she named pre-oedipal stage in which there is no sexual difference and has the same significance to both sexes instead of the oedipal stage which is becoming male-supreme reality as the semiotic and reinterpreted that an infant disregards feminine body--mother's body (Julia Kristeva, named it as Chora) as the love and the pain which carries her baby in herself and creates the baby which belonged to herself--which belongs to the semiotic to enter the symbolic smoothly. So the Abjection art is partly consist of some works which express the concertion of the boundary rebated with infant Identity which is not yet the other perfectly nor the subject perfectly, and of some works called Excretory Arts which express the excretion and vomiting which is the original experience of the abject. I expect that this research can be the chance of breaking from the fastened identity which was granted on female and feminine costume in this masculine-view centric society and creating the new position of costume and dress in the field of art by analyzing the costumes especially among these works.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.83-96
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• 2004

Upon the threshold of late 20th century, the social, cultural and artistic trend began to pursue aesthetic pluralism and deconstructivism, and thus, fashion also began to reflect such a trend only to express cruel, detestable, horrible and ugly aesthetics. Under such circumstances, this study focused on the cruel images appearing in the modern fashion and thereby, attempted to determine their causes in reference to Julia Kristeva's theories. Her theories of women explain that women have incessant desires or blind obsessions about penis due to the bisexual instinct inherent in their subconsciousness, and thereby, discuss sado-masochism, a characteristic of women's violence and cruelty. In addition, she determines of abject, detestable and horrible nature of women by explaining their struggle to be separated from mothers at the stage of Oedipus (sexual differences). Based on such theories about women's cruelty, the cruel images shown in the modern fashion are categorized into sado-masochism, the violent and destructive image, and abjection, the women's apparels made of unpleasant, terrible and creepy materials decorated, to be reviewed systematically.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.285-314
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• 2011

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the mother-daughter structure presented in Annie John, Kincaid's autobiographical novel as a metaphor for the relationship between the powerful colonizer and the powerless colonized. The representation of the mother in Annie John is ambiguous and ambivalent. On the one hand, the mother in the childhood, in its association with the African-rooted Caribbean world before Antigua was colonized, is represented as a person who nurtures the daughter, and embodies a paradisiacal pre-oedipal union with the daughter. On the other hand, the mother at the adolescent stage, placed in the specific colonial context of the Caribbean, is represented as a scornful person/colonizer who dominates and controls the daughter's behavior to keep her as a dependent and subjugated subject. Therefore, the two conflicting worlds, the African and the European, coexist in the contradictory figure of the mother. The theoretical basis of my argument is a mixture of Chodorow's and Kristeva's feministic psychoanalysis and Bhabha's notion of "mimicry" and "ambivalence." Kristeva's work on "abjection" is especially useful and helpful for contextualizing Annie's individuation and separation from the mother who is represented as enigmatic.

• American Studies
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.83-110
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• 2020

This paper examines the meaning and significance of the rebirths narrated in Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus." While the previous readings of the poem have regarded the speaker's rebirth as a single event, this paper aims to understand its plurality and the underlying problem of language and sound by listening to the poet's own reading of the poem. I argue first that the sound structure of the poem can be characterized by the poet's unique employment of vowel sounds. Drawing upon Plath's another poem entitled "Morning Song" and Julia Kristeva's concept of the chora, I contend that the poet's vowels signal her desire for regression to the pre-Oedipal space where sound and body are in direct contact without the interference of language. It is my conclusion that the rebirths in "Lady Lazarus" dramatize the poet's ongoing struggle to bypass the symbolic language in order to make her body heard.

• American Studies
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.179-202
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• 2018

This study approaches the novel from psychodynamic perspectives, where the narrative is woven into the strands of traumatic memories and past. Deriving from Julia Kristeva's discussion on melancholia, this paper discreetly examines Hata as a melancholic, who is unaware of what he has lost and even that he has lost. Racially abject but in defiance of his separation from 'the mother,' Hata introjects loss as his own subjectivity. The insoluble void causes him to wander through the bravado of belongingness, which he eventually transforms into Sublimation. This paper reads that Hata finally faces his own black sun, deviating from his earlier gesture life; thus, the novel becomes a successful case study of the melancholic. However, female bodies are at stake, subsumed under Hata's sexual perversion. The novel renders trauma behind the fragmented narrative of an Asian American man at the expense of consuming morbid 'feminine' bodies physically and psychologically.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.517-522
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• 2012

The work to be analyzed in this study is an animation showed in 2006, which was made by Director Satoshi Kon on the basis of a Japanese SF novel written by Yasutaka Tsutsui. The key point is to create a new meaning through showing imaginative power of audiences from the world flying across the borderland between reality and fiction. It regarded suitable for analysis of the borderland appearing in the unconscious world of dream and reality through "abjection". Therefore, this study intends to analogize the conclusion through analysis of the animation focusing on the theory of Julia Kristeva. Abject appears as the phenomenon which cannot be disappeared and the one threatening to disunite which the subject had already organized in the symbolic. The self-feeling of characters is not stable and it keeps watch constantly on the one which may neutralize his caution. They are looking for the power to strengthen the life granting to the subjecthood by chora as the resisting power against the symbolic order. That is, the dreaming space where revengeful power of primitive libido is working and shows mother as Paprika as well as enters through DC mini, works as the semiotic chora as "maternal body". The healing of mental lack in the symbolic caused from here is connected on the borderland to divide between meaning and meaningless as well as normality and abnormality in the semiotic and this is the maternal power of the semiotic. Therefore, "abjection", "abject" and "chora" as well as care and healing of the other self appearing in the subjectivization process in the can be regarded as the one caused from the love towards the subject to be analyzed.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Costume Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.29-29
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• 2003

20세기 후반 예술의 전반적인 흐름이 미적 다원주의와 해체주의를 지향하게 되자 패션에서도 이러한 시대적 조류의 현상으로 잔인하고 혐오스러우며 끔찍한 추의 미가 표현되었다. 본 연구는 현대 패션에서 나타나고 있는 잔혹한 이미지에 초점을 맞추며 이와 같은 양상이 발생하게 되는 원인을 줄리아 크리스테바의 이론과 적용시켜 고찰하였다.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1123-1137
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• 2009

Revisiting the horror of slave mutiny in nineteenth century America via Julia Kristeva's concept of abject, this essay examines abject fear in Amasa Delano and Babo's subversive act to deceive Delano in Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno." Babo, the slave, exercises subversive power, thereby reversing racial hierarchy aboard the slave ship-the San Dominick. Babo's ability to mimic and control racial stereotypes exposes how nineteenth-century racial hierarchy was only a social fiction, which becomes the very source of Delano's fear. Delano's dread belies upon the possible disruption of social order triggered by Babo'sblack rebellion. In order to repress his fear, Delano consciously and unconsciously attempts to re-inscribe white dominion and reaffirm black inferiority and stereotypes by means of rationalizing the disturbing signs he witnesses on the San Dominick. When Delano discovers the realsituation of the ship, he must relinquish the abject resonance that disturbs the previous racial order. Employing a legal document, Delano re-inscribes the official position of the blacks as slaves, defining them as violent savages, and thereby silences Babo. However, Melville's text is not a testament to white power. "Benito Cereno" actually endorses abject instability to challenge racial hierarchies through the poignant image of Babo's dead gaze in the last scene of the novella. Thus, "Benito Cereno" exemplifies the recurring power of abject as a threat to social hierarchy and as a constant reminder of the falsity and insecurity of a social order.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.483-507
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• 2018

Shylock in Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice has been considered as either a devilish villain, or as a victim who was persecuted unfairly by the Christian society in Venice. By focusing on the matter of the Other, which has been summarily overlooked in literary texts and the literary criticism, it is noted that the New Historical and Cultural criticism interpreted Shylock as the racial, religious, and economic Other in the Venetian society which at the time was dominated by Christian ideals. The purpose of this paper is to show how Shylock becomes an abjected Other, that is, the abject, based on Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection. According to Kristeva, an abjection is the process of expulsion of otherness from society, through which the subject or the nation tries to set up clear boundaries and establish a stable identity. Shylock is marginalized and abjected by the borders drawn by the Venetian Christian society, which in a strong sense tries to protect its identity and homogeneity by rejecting and excluding any unclean or improper otherness. The borders include the two visible borders like the Ghetto and the red hats worn by the Jews, and one invisible border in the religious and economic fields. By asking for one pound of Antonio's flesh when he can't pay back 3,000 ducats owed, Shylock tries to cross the border between Christians and Jews. Portia frustrates Shylock's desire to violate the border by presenting a different interpretation of the expression, 'one pound of flesh,' from Shylock's interpretation. And in doing so she expels him back to his original position of abject.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.365-389
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• 2014

The essay focuses on the relationship between the soldiers and the oppressed women in Lynn Nottage's Ruined (2009) in terms of Julia Kristeva's abject to show how the abjected Congolese women expose the falsehood of the order and identity that the military forces try to construct and maintain by war and violence. According to Kristeva, the abject is something that is rejected for the repulsion and horror it arouses but constantly draws the subject to it at the same time. Physically impaired and socially stigmatized, sexually abused Congolese women find a shelter in Mama Nadi's bar, the only place where they can continue their lives as the abject since the place, like the women themselves, lies outside the symbolic order occupied and corrupted by the men of DRC. Although the men involved in the armed conflict have abjected the women in pursuit of their own system and order, the women are not simply the objects of abuse and oppression. The men have to rely on Mama Nadi and her women not only to reaffirm their identity and power by suppressing them but also to fulfill their biological needs. In addition, the women's resistance against the soldiers demonstrates their power to challenge the men's symbolic order and expose its frailty. Apropos of the abject's resistance, various artistic genres such as poetry, music and dance appear in the play as an escape from the grim reality and a means of challenging and transcending the symbolic order. Bringing all these artistic elements together into a powerful piece of theatre-often considered as an 'abject' genre nowadays, Nottage demonstrates both the power of theatre as well as the tenacious Congolese women.