Abjection and the constitutive nature of difference: Class mourning in
Hypatia 21 (3) (2006)
| Abstract | : This essay examines the connections between ignorance and abjection. Chanter relates Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection to the mechanisms of division found in feminist theory, race theory, film theory, and cultural theory. The neglect of the co-constitutive relationships among such categories as gender, race, and class produces abjection. If those categories are treated as separate parts of a person's identity that merely interlock or intermesh, they are rendered invisible and unknowable even in the very discourses about them. Race thus becomes gender's unthought other, just as gender becomes the excluded other of race. Via an exploration of Margaret's Museum and Casablanca, the author shows why the various sexual, racial, and nationalist dynamics of the two films cannot be reduced to class or commodity fetishism, following Karl Marx, or psychoanalytic fetishism, following Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Whether they are crystallized in Marxist or Lacanian terms, fetishistic currencies of exchange are haunted by an imaginary populated by unthought, abject figures. Ejected from the systems of exchange consecrated as symbolic, fragmented, dislocated, diseased body parts inform and constitute meaning. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,679 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesZeynep Direk (2011). Immanence and Abjection in Simone de Beauvoir. Southern Journal of Philosophy 49 (1):49-72.
Tina Chanter (2000). Abjection and Ambiguity: Simone de Beauvoir's Legacy. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 14 (2):138-155.
P. X. Monaghan (2010). A Novel Interpretation of Plato's Theory of Forms. Metaphysica 11 (1):63-78.
Tina Chanter (2004). Kristeva and Levinas: Abjection and the Feminine. Studies in Practical Philosophy 4 (1):54-70.
Ivy Ken (2008). Beyond the Intersection: A New Culinary Metaphor for Race-Class-Gender Studies. Sociological Theory 26 (2):152 - 172.
Russell Ford (2010). The Picture of Abjection: Film, Fetish, and the Nature of Difference by Chanter, Tina. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68 (1):79-81.
Tina Chanter (2004). Abjection, or Why Freud Introduces the Phallus: Identification, Castration Theory, and the Logic of Fetishism. Southern Journal of Philosophy 42 (S1):48-66.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads21 ( #58,746 of 549,084 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,317 of 549,084 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
