The essay is very good, though the contrast between the words you use, as an erudite person, and the subject matter adds a jarring layer. As does the logic you apply because, I fear, what you're really describing is a scene in which the characters are mentally ill. When I have occasionally watched "Hoarders," the thing that strikes me most is the "logic" the hoarders apply to the situation, which bears little resemblance to the logic most people use.
Intellectually I find the topic of abjection easier to handle because of the mental detachment it affords. But just over the weekend a friend of mine fell sick and couldn’t stop throwing up. Despite the care in my heart I had for them, I couldn’t stop the more deeply instinctual need to pull away and guard myself from not just infection but abjection more broadly.
Immediately I caught myself pulling away, overwhelmed with the sheer disgust of the sight of vomit and visceral sounds of puking. I thought for a moment “oh this is what Kristeva meant by abjection”. It was a little bit funny to me because the actual real experience of the abjection is unlikely anything else or anything safe mental approximation image of the abject.
Still your essay does a really good job at explaining the experience of it(amongst other things)
Very powerful and suggestive, thank you. What an experience. When you’ve got a moment, would you clear up a very small verbal ambiguity for me, please? You write:
“Fundamentally, such collision with the abject is a reminder of the myth of the enlightenment: that beneath the veneer of progress, there is a chasm of filth and incoherence into which we can easily slip. Something, a something we cannot predict, can break within us and push us towards subjective annihilation, ending in a sort of abjectivity”
Do you mean that the chasm beneath is mythical, the progress actually real? Or is the veneer of enlightenment the myth-like thing?
ah I see the confusion. I meant the myth is the veneer. The enlightenment was a way of sort of papering over the “filth and incoherence” of real human experience.
same as what trumpists are doing to america, humans to the world.
it's acting out.
one is in despair.
The essay is very good, though the contrast between the words you use, as an erudite person, and the subject matter adds a jarring layer. As does the logic you apply because, I fear, what you're really describing is a scene in which the characters are mentally ill. When I have occasionally watched "Hoarders," the thing that strikes me most is the "logic" the hoarders apply to the situation, which bears little resemblance to the logic most people use.
Thanks for reading, Alan! Yes, I can only imagine mental illness being the main impetus behind such a "lifestyle"
Intellectually I find the topic of abjection easier to handle because of the mental detachment it affords. But just over the weekend a friend of mine fell sick and couldn’t stop throwing up. Despite the care in my heart I had for them, I couldn’t stop the more deeply instinctual need to pull away and guard myself from not just infection but abjection more broadly.
Immediately I caught myself pulling away, overwhelmed with the sheer disgust of the sight of vomit and visceral sounds of puking. I thought for a moment “oh this is what Kristeva meant by abjection”. It was a little bit funny to me because the actual real experience of the abjection is unlikely anything else or anything safe mental approximation image of the abject.
Still your essay does a really good job at explaining the experience of it(amongst other things)
thank you! I appreciate that
Very powerful and suggestive, thank you. What an experience. When you’ve got a moment, would you clear up a very small verbal ambiguity for me, please? You write:
“Fundamentally, such collision with the abject is a reminder of the myth of the enlightenment: that beneath the veneer of progress, there is a chasm of filth and incoherence into which we can easily slip. Something, a something we cannot predict, can break within us and push us towards subjective annihilation, ending in a sort of abjectivity”
Do you mean that the chasm beneath is mythical, the progress actually real? Or is the veneer of enlightenment the myth-like thing?
ah I see the confusion. I meant the myth is the veneer. The enlightenment was a way of sort of papering over the “filth and incoherence” of real human experience.
wonderful, very very astute musing on the abject, I think. Relevant on many levels
Thank you! I appreciate it!
thank you for helping those folks out