Anna Chromik-Krzykawska
Between Use and Refuse: Reclaiming the Abject into Culture
The paper deals with the notions of filth and waste understood as embodiments of cultural transgressions. The fear of pollution which underpins our culture can be read as a metaphorical anxiety of losing self-integrity: blurring the subject/object distinctions, confusing categories, and reminding us of the conventionality of any borders. Abject entities, such as human and animal excreta, putrefying corpses or corporeal fluids, are thus seen as filthy substances which breech the clear-cut borders of the Symbolic. What is more, their threatening power lies also in the fact that they surpass the modernist discourse of rationality, being the ultimate embodiment of what the utilitarian system does not account for, that is, waste. In order to be reclaimed by culture, the abject must be drawn into the circuit of usefulness, and thus renamed, recycled and domesticated. From the anatomical renaissance which rationalized exploration of the body innards by translating it into the system of language and diagrams to the nineteenth century utopian fantasies turning polluting substances into productive riches, Western modern discourses are to a large extent delineated by their relation to the abject.
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Zasady cytowania
Nr 14 (2007)
Opublikowane: 2007-01-01
10.31261/errgo
English
Język Polski