Rina Arya and Nicholas Chare (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The rich variety of essays in Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture demonstrate that abjection as a concept continues to hold great value as an aid to cultural understanding and ...
More
The rich variety of essays in Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture demonstrate that abjection as a concept continues to hold great value as an aid to cultural understanding and a prompt to critical reflection. They communicate the enduring power and relevance of the abject by explaining how it conveys ideas about aesthetic, social and moral conventions with regards to representation and viewing. Theories of the abject are key to understanding the contemporary. This is because abject art and literature are not bound to a particular period or geographical location. They adapt to reflect changing times and contexts. The essays in this volume cumulatively demonstrate that abjection is not singular but plural and multiform. In their chosen themes and artists, the contributors draw on the ideas of Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva, and others such as Judith Butler, Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss, as part of their approach to extending current ways of conceiving abjection. The majority of the essays focus on the visual arts although there are also considerations of how attending to the abject can inform readings of film, theatre and literature, a fact which attests to its interdisciplinary relevance.Less
The rich variety of essays in Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture demonstrate that abjection as a concept continues to hold great value as an aid to cultural understanding and a prompt to critical reflection. They communicate the enduring power and relevance of the abject by explaining how it conveys ideas about aesthetic, social and moral conventions with regards to representation and viewing. Theories of the abject are key to understanding the contemporary. This is because abject art and literature are not bound to a particular period or geographical location. They adapt to reflect changing times and contexts. The essays in this volume cumulatively demonstrate that abjection is not singular but plural and multiform. In their chosen themes and artists, the contributors draw on the ideas of Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva, and others such as Judith Butler, Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss, as part of their approach to extending current ways of conceiving abjection. The majority of the essays focus on the visual arts although there are also considerations of how attending to the abject can inform readings of film, theatre and literature, a fact which attests to its interdisciplinary relevance.
Aaron Kerner and Jonathan Knapp
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474402903
- eISBN:
- 9781474422000
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402903.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Extreme Cinema surveys post-millennial trends in transnational cinema—particularly in its highly stylized treatment of explicit sex and violence. In many cases these cinematic embellishments skirt ...
More
Extreme Cinema surveys post-millennial trends in transnational cinema—particularly in its highly stylized treatment of explicit sex and violence. In many cases these cinematic embellishments skirt narrative motivation or even impede narrative progression, favoring instead the possibility to elicit an affective response in the spectator: physical sensation separate from cognition and emotion. As a result, in many instances extreme cinema is not governed according to narrative conventions (narrative arcs driven by character motivation), and instead emphasizes spectacles. If not episodic in structure, then, extreme cinema might host abrupt ruptures in the diegetic narrative—experiments in form and/or composition (editing, extreme close-ups, visual disorientation, sounds that straddle the boundary between non-diegetic and diegetic registers), the exhibition of intense violence and pain, acute intimacy with bodies in the throes of sex. In more episodic films, like the musical, or pornography, extreme cinema frequently showcases set cinematic numbers that flood sensory channels with auditory and/or visual stimulus. Extreme cinema wields the potential to manipulate the viewing body (as demonstrated by “reaction” videos posted on hosting sites such as YouTube). Crucially, the affects and emotions prompted by these films can vary wildly: abjection, disgust, arousal, laughter. Films considered include those of the American torture porn genre, as well as films that other scholars and marketers have classified as “New French Extremity” and “Asia Extreme.” While content is assuredly a concern, what Extreme Cinema explores, above all, is the importance of cinematic form.Less
Extreme Cinema surveys post-millennial trends in transnational cinema—particularly in its highly stylized treatment of explicit sex and violence. In many cases these cinematic embellishments skirt narrative motivation or even impede narrative progression, favoring instead the possibility to elicit an affective response in the spectator: physical sensation separate from cognition and emotion. As a result, in many instances extreme cinema is not governed according to narrative conventions (narrative arcs driven by character motivation), and instead emphasizes spectacles. If not episodic in structure, then, extreme cinema might host abrupt ruptures in the diegetic narrative—experiments in form and/or composition (editing, extreme close-ups, visual disorientation, sounds that straddle the boundary between non-diegetic and diegetic registers), the exhibition of intense violence and pain, acute intimacy with bodies in the throes of sex. In more episodic films, like the musical, or pornography, extreme cinema frequently showcases set cinematic numbers that flood sensory channels with auditory and/or visual stimulus. Extreme cinema wields the potential to manipulate the viewing body (as demonstrated by “reaction” videos posted on hosting sites such as YouTube). Crucially, the affects and emotions prompted by these films can vary wildly: abjection, disgust, arousal, laughter. Films considered include those of the American torture porn genre, as well as films that other scholars and marketers have classified as “New French Extremity” and “Asia Extreme.” While content is assuredly a concern, what Extreme Cinema explores, above all, is the importance of cinematic form.
Rebecca Bowler and Claire Drewery (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474415750
- eISBN:
- 9781474415774
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415750.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This monograph brings together the most recent research on Sinclair and re-contextualises her work both within and against dominant Modernist narratives. It explores Sinclair’s negotiations between ...
More
This monograph brings together the most recent research on Sinclair and re-contextualises her work both within and against dominant Modernist narratives. It explores Sinclair’s negotiations between the public and private, the cerebral and the corporeal and the spiritual and the profane in both her fiction and non-fiction. The essays contained in this volume are grouped under two sections entitled ‘The Abstract Intellect’ and ‘Abject Bodies’. They each address the various ways in which Sinclair endeavoured to formulate aesthetic techniques through which the subjective, physical and intellectual experience of ‘reality’ might be represented. Together, the two sections of the monograph investigate the many fruitful connections between Sinclair’s fictional, critical and philosophical output and the structures of epochal change traditionally associated with literary Modernism. They focus in particular upon Sinclair’s engagement with early-twentieth century cultural changes in perceptions of the construction and representation of the human subject. Such interrogations were made possible through contemporaneous shifts in humanist beliefs about subjective construction following thinkers like Freud, who theorized humans as constructs of unconscious drives and desires. Ultimately, the essays and the volume as a whole conclude that Sinclair’s work might be viewed in this context as a radical ontological challenge to traditional assumptions about what it means to be human.Less
This monograph brings together the most recent research on Sinclair and re-contextualises her work both within and against dominant Modernist narratives. It explores Sinclair’s negotiations between the public and private, the cerebral and the corporeal and the spiritual and the profane in both her fiction and non-fiction. The essays contained in this volume are grouped under two sections entitled ‘The Abstract Intellect’ and ‘Abject Bodies’. They each address the various ways in which Sinclair endeavoured to formulate aesthetic techniques through which the subjective, physical and intellectual experience of ‘reality’ might be represented. Together, the two sections of the monograph investigate the many fruitful connections between Sinclair’s fictional, critical and philosophical output and the structures of epochal change traditionally associated with literary Modernism. They focus in particular upon Sinclair’s engagement with early-twentieth century cultural changes in perceptions of the construction and representation of the human subject. Such interrogations were made possible through contemporaneous shifts in humanist beliefs about subjective construction following thinkers like Freud, who theorized humans as constructs of unconscious drives and desires. Ultimately, the essays and the volume as a whole conclude that Sinclair’s work might be viewed in this context as a radical ontological challenge to traditional assumptions about what it means to be human.
Laura A. Pearson (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496815118
- eISBN:
- 9781496815156
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496815118.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
At the heart of Nina Bunjevac’s 2012 comics collection Heartless is the catwoman Zorka, eponymous protagonist of the five-story sequence “Bitter Tears of Zorka Petrovic.” Reading “Bitter Tears” as ...
More
At the heart of Nina Bunjevac’s 2012 comics collection Heartless is the catwoman Zorka, eponymous protagonist of the five-story sequence “Bitter Tears of Zorka Petrovic.” Reading “Bitter Tears” as tragicomic satire—poised between a comedy of errors and a tragedy of ideologically grounded ideals—this chapter looks to explore some of the “alternative tensions” that arise from Bunjevac’s humanimal enunciations, and to account for the powerful feelings of abjection that emerge from the text’s orientation in the grotesque. Zorka’s “catness” is both cage and key, drawing readers to her and inviting both counter- and transcultural readings that radiate outwards into the text.Less
At the heart of Nina Bunjevac’s 2012 comics collection Heartless is the catwoman Zorka, eponymous protagonist of the five-story sequence “Bitter Tears of Zorka Petrovic.” Reading “Bitter Tears” as tragicomic satire—poised between a comedy of errors and a tragedy of ideologically grounded ideals—this chapter looks to explore some of the “alternative tensions” that arise from Bunjevac’s humanimal enunciations, and to account for the powerful feelings of abjection that emerge from the text’s orientation in the grotesque. Zorka’s “catness” is both cage and key, drawing readers to her and inviting both counter- and transcultural readings that radiate outwards into the text.
John Lechte
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0002
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
In this essay John Lechte develops the idea of the abject as beyond objectification. Grounding his argument in Immanuel Kant’s conception of the beautiful as that which has no concept, Lechte asks if ...
More
In this essay John Lechte develops the idea of the abject as beyond objectification. Grounding his argument in Immanuel Kant’s conception of the beautiful as that which has no concept, Lechte asks if there can really be an art of the abject given the concept’s elusive status. He answers this question through an analysis of the film Sombre(Dir. Philippe Grandrieux, France, 1998). For Lechte, the abject “represents” a radical immanence. Abject art is therefore art that takes the non-object as its object. Grandrieux’s films, through their chiaroscuro cinematography, comprise works in which the medium of film appears to be foregrounded. The sombre lighting makes objects difficult to discern. This has led some commentators to contend that Grandrieux brings the materiality of film to the screen. Lechte, however, argues that materiality is always already screened, barred from us, by the very process of signification that seeks to capture it. In this light, if there is an abject element to Sombreit can only ever be evoked rather than clearly represented for to represent it would be to abolish it.Less
In this essay John Lechte develops the idea of the abject as beyond objectification. Grounding his argument in Immanuel Kant’s conception of the beautiful as that which has no concept, Lechte asks if there can really be an art of the abject given the concept’s elusive status. He answers this question through an analysis of the film Sombre(Dir. Philippe Grandrieux, France, 1998). For Lechte, the abject “represents” a radical immanence. Abject art is therefore art that takes the non-object as its object. Grandrieux’s films, through their chiaroscuro cinematography, comprise works in which the medium of film appears to be foregrounded. The sombre lighting makes objects difficult to discern. This has led some commentators to contend that Grandrieux brings the materiality of film to the screen. Lechte, however, argues that materiality is always already screened, barred from us, by the very process of signification that seeks to capture it. In this light, if there is an abject element to Sombreit can only ever be evoked rather than clearly represented for to represent it would be to abolish it.
Nicholas Chare
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Drawing on the work of Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva, Nicholas Chare suggests that the Surrealist project possessed an underlying sadistic impulse that was prefigured in the art of Édouard ...
More
Drawing on the work of Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva, Nicholas Chare suggests that the Surrealist project possessed an underlying sadistic impulse that was prefigured in the art of Édouard Manet. Manet exploited paint’s potentially aberrant qualities through an aggressive approach to composition and handling. Artworks that exhibit a deviant painterliness often function within Surrealism to question dominant ideas about identity, particularly sexual identity. The abject qualities of Manet’s works prompt such a questioning. Chare contrasts Manet’s technique with that of Jackson Pollock to tease out the nature of the former’s brutal formalism, his Surrealism, and elaborate on its capacity to recast identity without losing sight of the self entirely.Less
Drawing on the work of Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva, Nicholas Chare suggests that the Surrealist project possessed an underlying sadistic impulse that was prefigured in the art of Édouard Manet. Manet exploited paint’s potentially aberrant qualities through an aggressive approach to composition and handling. Artworks that exhibit a deviant painterliness often function within Surrealism to question dominant ideas about identity, particularly sexual identity. The abject qualities of Manet’s works prompt such a questioning. Chare contrasts Manet’s technique with that of Jackson Pollock to tease out the nature of the former’s brutal formalism, his Surrealism, and elaborate on its capacity to recast identity without losing sight of the self entirely.
Rex Butler and A. D. S. Donaldson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Building on the theories of Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Žižek, Rex Butler and A. D. S. Donaldson explore how debates about modernism and postmodernism are played out in the work of Chilean-Australian ...
More
Building on the theories of Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Žižek, Rex Butler and A. D. S. Donaldson explore how debates about modernism and postmodernism are played out in the work of Chilean-Australian artist Juan Davila. The abject assumes a central role in these debates as it cannot be equated either with the medium or the message of art. It falls outside polarising arguments over the privileging of surface or subject matter. The abject is not present in Davila’s paintings. It cannot become their subject given its quality as a non-object. The abject is rather that which resists becoming subject. It refuses to be made to matter as a subject because it refuses objectification. It is, however, not a simple matter. It is a kind of arrested or abeyant signification: it occupies the gap between matter and meaning. Butler and Donaldson show how Davila works within this gap exploiting the abject’s slipperiness in his recent pictures as a means to intervene in contemporary aesthetic disputes about the role of the medium in art.Less
Building on the theories of Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Žižek, Rex Butler and A. D. S. Donaldson explore how debates about modernism and postmodernism are played out in the work of Chilean-Australian artist Juan Davila. The abject assumes a central role in these debates as it cannot be equated either with the medium or the message of art. It falls outside polarising arguments over the privileging of surface or subject matter. The abject is not present in Davila’s paintings. It cannot become their subject given its quality as a non-object. The abject is rather that which resists becoming subject. It refuses to be made to matter as a subject because it refuses objectification. It is, however, not a simple matter. It is a kind of arrested or abeyant signification: it occupies the gap between matter and meaning. Butler and Donaldson show how Davila works within this gap exploiting the abject’s slipperiness in his recent pictures as a means to intervene in contemporary aesthetic disputes about the role of the medium in art.
Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn’s essay, ‘Animals, Art and Abjection’, teases out the implications of Kristeva’s contention in Powers of Horrorthat the abject engenders a fragile state within which ...
More
Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn’s essay, ‘Animals, Art and Abjection’, teases out the implications of Kristeva’s contention in Powers of Horrorthat the abject engenders a fragile state within which the human strays on the territory of the animal. For Kristeva, some cultures have branded animals as abject and as ‘representatives of sex and murder’. In such cultures, the animal is figured in negative terms and notions of animalism, of the human as an animal species, are suppressed. Animals therefore figure as impure and are made to form the constitutive outside to the human. Creed and Hoorn, however, argue that contemporary art practices that explore animals and animality do so as a means to challenge the notion that animals form humankind’s abject other. In this context, the artworks do not function to purify the abject but rather embrace what has hitherto been labelled as abject as a means to renegotiate its status from within an anthropocentric society.Less
Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn’s essay, ‘Animals, Art and Abjection’, teases out the implications of Kristeva’s contention in Powers of Horrorthat the abject engenders a fragile state within which the human strays on the territory of the animal. For Kristeva, some cultures have branded animals as abject and as ‘representatives of sex and murder’. In such cultures, the animal is figured in negative terms and notions of animalism, of the human as an animal species, are suppressed. Animals therefore figure as impure and are made to form the constitutive outside to the human. Creed and Hoorn, however, argue that contemporary art practices that explore animals and animality do so as a means to challenge the notion that animals form humankind’s abject other. In this context, the artworks do not function to purify the abject but rather embrace what has hitherto been labelled as abject as a means to renegotiate its status from within an anthropocentric society.
Ernst van Alphen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0008
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Ernst van Alphen’s essay is a synoptic study of abjection in the context of Francis Bacon’s art: it investigates the various ways and senses in which Bacon’s art can be described as abject. On the ...
More
Ernst van Alphen’s essay is a synoptic study of abjection in the context of Francis Bacon’s art: it investigates the various ways and senses in which Bacon’s art can be described as abject. On the face of it, Bacon’s paintings are abject but this appearance needs to be probed further to examine the significance of the boundary between matter and representation, for instance, and of his figures themselves which are fragmented and which demonstrate various positions of subjecthood at risk. Calling on the work of theorists including Mikhail Bakhtin and Roland Barthes, van Alphen explores the identity of the Baconian figure and argues for a fresh way of thinking about the abject condition of Bacon’s figures. A further area of study in his essay draws on Hal Foster’s work and concerns how the viewer is provoked to complete the operation of the abject, which results in a reshattering of the viewer’s sense of self. Van Alphen’s study shows how abjection can be used to elicit a host of other Baconian themes about representation, viewing and identity.Less
Ernst van Alphen’s essay is a synoptic study of abjection in the context of Francis Bacon’s art: it investigates the various ways and senses in which Bacon’s art can be described as abject. On the face of it, Bacon’s paintings are abject but this appearance needs to be probed further to examine the significance of the boundary between matter and representation, for instance, and of his figures themselves which are fragmented and which demonstrate various positions of subjecthood at risk. Calling on the work of theorists including Mikhail Bakhtin and Roland Barthes, van Alphen explores the identity of the Baconian figure and argues for a fresh way of thinking about the abject condition of Bacon’s figures. A further area of study in his essay draws on Hal Foster’s work and concerns how the viewer is provoked to complete the operation of the abject, which results in a reshattering of the viewer’s sense of self. Van Alphen’s study shows how abjection can be used to elicit a host of other Baconian themes about representation, viewing and identity.
Kerstin Mey
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0010
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Kerstin Mey considers how, although death and its concomitant connotations – disease and demise – have been removed from the public gaze in the West, this has not reduced our fascination with these ...
More
Kerstin Mey considers how, although death and its concomitant connotations – disease and demise – have been removed from the public gaze in the West, this has not reduced our fascination with these subjects. Nor has it removed their exploration through various forms of mediatized culture, including graphic video games, films and the visual arts. She examines the mass appeal of the anatomist Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds, which was a worldwide touring exhibition between 1995 and 2011 that focused on the display of preserved corpses and body fragments. The scientific process of Plastination was employed to preserve the body tissue and reveal inner anatomical structures which gave the specimens a hyperreal colouration, somewhat departing from the visceral ghastliness expected of bodily parts but in other ways imparting the starkness of our grim destinies, especially given the lifelike poses of the corpses. Mey’s essay details the different aspects of von Hagen’s controversial but influential work and also examines the work of other artists who are engaged in similar subject matter, such as Joel-Peter Witkin, the art group AES + F and Andres Serrano’s morgue series.Less
Kerstin Mey considers how, although death and its concomitant connotations – disease and demise – have been removed from the public gaze in the West, this has not reduced our fascination with these subjects. Nor has it removed their exploration through various forms of mediatized culture, including graphic video games, films and the visual arts. She examines the mass appeal of the anatomist Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds, which was a worldwide touring exhibition between 1995 and 2011 that focused on the display of preserved corpses and body fragments. The scientific process of Plastination was employed to preserve the body tissue and reveal inner anatomical structures which gave the specimens a hyperreal colouration, somewhat departing from the visceral ghastliness expected of bodily parts but in other ways imparting the starkness of our grim destinies, especially given the lifelike poses of the corpses. Mey’s essay details the different aspects of von Hagen’s controversial but influential work and also examines the work of other artists who are engaged in similar subject matter, such as Joel-Peter Witkin, the art group AES + F and Andres Serrano’s morgue series.
Calvin Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0011
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Calvin Thomas explores the differing roles of the abject as a theme in the writings of the contemporary authors Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. For Thomas, Wallace’s novella ‘The Suffering ...
More
Calvin Thomas explores the differing roles of the abject as a theme in the writings of the contemporary authors Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. For Thomas, Wallace’s novella ‘The Suffering Channel’, which features an artist who claims to excrete fully-modelled figurative sculptures, demonstrates how literature provides a crucial means to convey abject suffering. Wallace’s faecal theme provides the means by which the author analyses abjected masculinity in contemporary America and also art’s claim to use stories to reveal truths.Less
Calvin Thomas explores the differing roles of the abject as a theme in the writings of the contemporary authors Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. For Thomas, Wallace’s novella ‘The Suffering Channel’, which features an artist who claims to excrete fully-modelled figurative sculptures, demonstrates how literature provides a crucial means to convey abject suffering. Wallace’s faecal theme provides the means by which the author analyses abjected masculinity in contemporary America and also art’s claim to use stories to reveal truths.
Daniel Watt
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0012
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Daniel Watt’s ‘Base Materials: Performing the Abject Object’ configures abjection within the performing arts, and in particular within theatre, thereby underscoring the significance of catharsis in ...
More
Daniel Watt’s ‘Base Materials: Performing the Abject Object’ configures abjection within the performing arts, and in particular within theatre, thereby underscoring the significance of catharsis in abjection as grounded by Antonin Artaud’s work. Watt examines the radical theatre practices of Tadeusz Kantor, who co-founded the Cricot2 theatre in 1955, and Jerzy Grotowski’s theatre company, which began in 1959. What these share is a view of the practice of immersion in abjection. The actor in Kantor’s theatre, the bio-object (which is neither human nor object) is transformed throughout the performances from person to thing. In Grotowskian performance the body is sacrificed in total theatre. Both cases articulate how the sacrificial abjection of the performing object reveals a vision of reality, in a Bataillean sense, that conveys the potentiality of theatre as one that unveils the human, through a different type of communal event that entails the dissolution of selfhood (jouissance) and the power of horror. The task of performance becomes one of immersion in abjection.Less
Daniel Watt’s ‘Base Materials: Performing the Abject Object’ configures abjection within the performing arts, and in particular within theatre, thereby underscoring the significance of catharsis in abjection as grounded by Antonin Artaud’s work. Watt examines the radical theatre practices of Tadeusz Kantor, who co-founded the Cricot2 theatre in 1955, and Jerzy Grotowski’s theatre company, which began in 1959. What these share is a view of the practice of immersion in abjection. The actor in Kantor’s theatre, the bio-object (which is neither human nor object) is transformed throughout the performances from person to thing. In Grotowskian performance the body is sacrificed in total theatre. Both cases articulate how the sacrificial abjection of the performing object reveals a vision of reality, in a Bataillean sense, that conveys the potentiality of theatre as one that unveils the human, through a different type of communal event that entails the dissolution of selfhood (jouissance) and the power of horror. The task of performance becomes one of immersion in abjection.
Justine Gieni
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496806444
- eISBN:
- 9781496806482
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496806444.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Justine Gieni examines the language and illustrations of Heinrich Hoffman’s 1845 picturebook Struwwelpeter, a seminal text in the genre that, on the surface at least, makes explicit use of horrifying ...
More
Justine Gieni examines the language and illustrations of Heinrich Hoffman’s 1845 picturebook Struwwelpeter, a seminal text in the genre that, on the surface at least, makes explicit use of horrifying methods of childhood death and dismemberment as a means of cautioning young readers to behave according to the strictures of its era. In her essay, however, Gieni zeroes in on the transgressive nature of Hoffman’s tales, concentrating specifically on the role of body horror in the text. Entering the debate about the book’s appropriateness for child audiences, Gieni focuses especially on the violence committed against the child’s body in the book, arguing that, through the “powers of horror,” Hoffman satirizes the pedagogical didacticism of nineteenth-century German culture and empowers young readers, allowing them to experience the thrill of derisive laughter in the face of brutal authoritarianism. She also illuminatingly considers the publication, relevance, and reception of Struwwelpeter today, discussing how it has been rebranded as a text for “knowing” adult audiences with an emphasis more on its horror than its humor, as well as the implications of such a shift in the text’s purported readership and thematic intentions.Less
Justine Gieni examines the language and illustrations of Heinrich Hoffman’s 1845 picturebook Struwwelpeter, a seminal text in the genre that, on the surface at least, makes explicit use of horrifying methods of childhood death and dismemberment as a means of cautioning young readers to behave according to the strictures of its era. In her essay, however, Gieni zeroes in on the transgressive nature of Hoffman’s tales, concentrating specifically on the role of body horror in the text. Entering the debate about the book’s appropriateness for child audiences, Gieni focuses especially on the violence committed against the child’s body in the book, arguing that, through the “powers of horror,” Hoffman satirizes the pedagogical didacticism of nineteenth-century German culture and empowers young readers, allowing them to experience the thrill of derisive laughter in the face of brutal authoritarianism. She also illuminatingly considers the publication, relevance, and reception of Struwwelpeter today, discussing how it has been rebranded as a text for “knowing” adult audiences with an emphasis more on its horror than its humor, as well as the implications of such a shift in the text’s purported readership and thematic intentions.
Martin Fradley
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676392
- eISBN:
- 9780748693856
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676392.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Shane Meadows' films are preoccupied with bodily functions, scatological humour and themes of social abjection. Rather than dismiss these bawdy comical interludes as deviations from the director's ...
More
Shane Meadows' films are preoccupied with bodily functions, scatological humour and themes of social abjection. Rather than dismiss these bawdy comical interludes as deviations from the director's more ostensibly serious themes, the consistently grotesque terrain of Meadows' worldview is best understood in political terms as a form of resistance to neoliberal ideology. Meadows's films consistently valorise mutuality and working-class commonality through recourse to corporeal terrain: the political is thus significantly embodied in Meadows' oeuvre. In rejecting the self-regulating fictions of neoliberal individualism, Meadows' grotesque themes function as a form of oppositional ‘dirty protest’ against the hegemonic interpellations of middle-class social normalcy. This is exemplified by the bodily excesses of Tomo (Thomas Turgoose) in Somers Town (2008), a character who typically embodies a distinctly Meadowsian form of ‘excremental heroism’ which systematically rejects the atomised individualism of neoliberal culture.Less
Shane Meadows' films are preoccupied with bodily functions, scatological humour and themes of social abjection. Rather than dismiss these bawdy comical interludes as deviations from the director's more ostensibly serious themes, the consistently grotesque terrain of Meadows' worldview is best understood in political terms as a form of resistance to neoliberal ideology. Meadows's films consistently valorise mutuality and working-class commonality through recourse to corporeal terrain: the political is thus significantly embodied in Meadows' oeuvre. In rejecting the self-regulating fictions of neoliberal individualism, Meadows' grotesque themes function as a form of oppositional ‘dirty protest’ against the hegemonic interpellations of middle-class social normalcy. This is exemplified by the bodily excesses of Tomo (Thomas Turgoose) in Somers Town (2008), a character who typically embodies a distinctly Meadowsian form of ‘excremental heroism’ which systematically rejects the atomised individualism of neoliberal culture.
Zeynep Direk
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823265190
- eISBN:
- 9780823266890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265190.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This essay inquires into the intellectual relation between Bataille and Kristeva by focusing on their conceptions of the religious experience as an experience of desire, law, and death. It lays out ...
More
This essay inquires into the intellectual relation between Bataille and Kristeva by focusing on their conceptions of the religious experience as an experience of desire, law, and death. It lays out how their reflections on religious signification have evolved throughout the different phases of their thinking. Even though both have interpreted religion in terms of abjection, Kristeva’s psychoanalytic approach to religion differs from Bataille’s anthropological reflections. The essay shows that Kristeva’s reading of Bataille changed from an appreciation of him as a thinker of poetic revolution in 1970s to a figure of revolt in 1980s, a period in which Bataille still continues to be a source of inspiration for Kristeva’s theorization of the sacred, religion, erotic, abjection, language, and revolt, though now she disavows his legacy and seeks to distance herself from his thought. In the 1990s, Kristeva comes to the point of dismissing him as a historical, even nostalgic figure of transgression.Less
This essay inquires into the intellectual relation between Bataille and Kristeva by focusing on their conceptions of the religious experience as an experience of desire, law, and death. It lays out how their reflections on religious signification have evolved throughout the different phases of their thinking. Even though both have interpreted religion in terms of abjection, Kristeva’s psychoanalytic approach to religion differs from Bataille’s anthropological reflections. The essay shows that Kristeva’s reading of Bataille changed from an appreciation of him as a thinker of poetic revolution in 1970s to a figure of revolt in 1980s, a period in which Bataille still continues to be a source of inspiration for Kristeva’s theorization of the sacred, religion, erotic, abjection, language, and revolt, though now she disavows his legacy and seeks to distance herself from his thought. In the 1990s, Kristeva comes to the point of dismissing him as a historical, even nostalgic figure of transgression.
Christopher Fynsk
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251025
- eISBN:
- 9780823252817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251025.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Throughout Blanchot's post-war writings, but particularly after his return to national politics in 1958, one finds that articulation of a dual imperative: pursuing political justice while answering ...
More
Throughout Blanchot's post-war writings, but particularly after his return to national politics in 1958, one finds that articulation of a dual imperative: pursuing political justice while answering to an infinite (impossible) exigency that belongs to the ethical relation and to which writing must answer. This concluding statement draws together a core argument of the book by asserting that the relation between these apparently divergent imperatives must be thought as an oriented passage.Less
Throughout Blanchot's post-war writings, but particularly after his return to national politics in 1958, one finds that articulation of a dual imperative: pursuing political justice while answering to an infinite (impossible) exigency that belongs to the ethical relation and to which writing must answer. This concluding statement draws together a core argument of the book by asserting that the relation between these apparently divergent imperatives must be thought as an oriented passage.
Felicia Chan
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474424592
- eISBN:
- 9781474444705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424592.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Horror films in Hong Kong cinema have eschewed terror in favour of comedy, where supernatural beings take the form of hopping vampires, wandering spirits and underworld demons rendered in latex masks ...
More
Horror films in Hong Kong cinema have eschewed terror in favour of comedy, where supernatural beings take the form of hopping vampires, wandering spirits and underworld demons rendered in latex masks and movie slime. This chapter explores the comic presentation of these subjects in Hong Kong horror, where the self-reflexive exposure of the cinematic machinery of costume and special effects appear to put it at odds with the spectral affectivity of the Hong Kong ghost story. This chapter returns to two classic films from the mid-1980s, A Chinese Ghost Story (Tsui Hark 1987) and Rouge (Stanley Kwan 1988), films from the ‘second wave’ period long noted to carry ‘Hong Kong’ as a subject of concern in the run up to the British handover of 1997, and revisits their historical positioning in the light of more recent post-1997 incarnations such as Visible Secret (Ann Hui 2001), My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (Johnnie To 2002), and Rigor Mortis (Juno Mak 2013).Less
Horror films in Hong Kong cinema have eschewed terror in favour of comedy, where supernatural beings take the form of hopping vampires, wandering spirits and underworld demons rendered in latex masks and movie slime. This chapter explores the comic presentation of these subjects in Hong Kong horror, where the self-reflexive exposure of the cinematic machinery of costume and special effects appear to put it at odds with the spectral affectivity of the Hong Kong ghost story. This chapter returns to two classic films from the mid-1980s, A Chinese Ghost Story (Tsui Hark 1987) and Rouge (Stanley Kwan 1988), films from the ‘second wave’ period long noted to carry ‘Hong Kong’ as a subject of concern in the run up to the British handover of 1997, and revisits their historical positioning in the light of more recent post-1997 incarnations such as Visible Secret (Ann Hui 2001), My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (Johnnie To 2002), and Rigor Mortis (Juno Mak 2013).
Kimberly B. Stratton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780195342703
- eISBN:
- 9780199387748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195342703.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World, Religion and Literature
This chapter’s reading of Roman depictions of women’s sorcery situates those portraits of magic in the context of ancient conceptions of the body and concerns over the instability and mutability of ...
More
This chapter’s reading of Roman depictions of women’s sorcery situates those portraits of magic in the context of ancient conceptions of the body and concerns over the instability and mutability of bodies and society. The chapter enlists the concept of abjection as developed by Julia Kristeva to illuminate certain features of these portraits—namely, their consistent identification of magic with unstable bodies, identities, and threats to social order. Kristeva’s notion of abjection explains not only the association of magic with the macabre in these portraits, but also helps to illuminate the frequent association of women with certain types of destabilizing magic in Roman texts. While the gendering of magic is by no means consistent or universal in the ancient Mediterranean, this way of reading depictions of women’s magic permits us to see how ideas about magic reflected and were embedded in other social concerns and ideological systems.Less
This chapter’s reading of Roman depictions of women’s sorcery situates those portraits of magic in the context of ancient conceptions of the body and concerns over the instability and mutability of bodies and society. The chapter enlists the concept of abjection as developed by Julia Kristeva to illuminate certain features of these portraits—namely, their consistent identification of magic with unstable bodies, identities, and threats to social order. Kristeva’s notion of abjection explains not only the association of magic with the macabre in these portraits, but also helps to illuminate the frequent association of women with certain types of destabilizing magic in Roman texts. While the gendering of magic is by no means consistent or universal in the ancient Mediterranean, this way of reading depictions of women’s magic permits us to see how ideas about magic reflected and were embedded in other social concerns and ideological systems.
