What is abjection and how can a novel be considered abject?

Abjection is a state of insecurity. More precisely, it is the affect of the state of insecurity.

Kristeva uses examples such as vomit, refuse, corpses, and the repulsion of milk to explain the physicality of abjection. It would be a part of you that you cannot accept as you. What you always and forever violently reject from yourself. This rejection is repeated every time this non-object is encountered.

As far as literature is concerned, Kristeva considers horror & terror to be the manifestation of abjection. Yet then she says that we should not rely solely on a book’s thematics. Her elaborations about abject authors and why they are so are puzzling.

I am interested in how abjection is expressed in the Word, the way a story is communicated.

Abjection is a border. An ambiguity. Ambiguity meaning that which has double (or more) meanings. A language that can multiply meanings in the mind of its readers. This multiplicity engages more than just themes, it is at the very core of the story(ies), of the narrative(s). Also, these meanings do not imply simply seeing things one way or another; they imply a meaning that attracts and fascinates yet due to its potential horror/terror it also repulses. The reader wonders “Is this what the author means?” and then answers herself “No, it can’t be! … Can it?” That doubt attracts. It keeps the reader reading, even if she is reading on the verge of repulsion.

A way of creating such ambiguity is to have meaning articulate itself in the gaps of the narrative, in its silences. The “not said” tells of the “possibly said.” Different writing techniques are used to express silences, or to conceal them. Barnes does this with an excess use of words. This excess, this too much, this “trop c’est comme pas assez” brings the reader full circle to a land void of a straightforward meaning. She does this not only in O’Connor’s dia/monologues, which are well renowned for their excesses, but also in her descriptions of places and characters. This fanfare of words dizzies the reader, or confounds them. Caught in a thick jungle of words, the reader searches for meaning while haunted by a sneaky suspicion that it lurks in the trees above, behind the next frond, staring back at her. At the same time, her characters drop words of a story that are just enough to keep the reader guessing, so to keep them strangely interested in this text.

Stone uses an entirely different technique. She interrupts meaning at the sentence level, which then works its way up, so to speak. Her sentences are fragmented. They sometimes stop where they shouldn’t and at other times they begin where they should be continuing another one. These fragments serve to change meaning through a type of repetition, by placing emphasis and by re-wording. A sense, a meaning is there. The reader feels it, but doesn’t (and sometimes cannot) precisely know it. This technique has the reader continually plunging into voids trying to grasp meaning, like plunging into a sea and then coming up for air and wondering if she saw correctly under the surface. With the next plunge and the next resurfacing, the reader tries to make sense of the meaning grasped, tries to plug the meanings into a coherent narrative that can be understood.

Of course, the abject of these authors goes beyond words and sentences, but I’ll think about that tomorrow…

The silences of both books hint at an underlining violence, or, to put it in more romantic terms, a seeping and unmentionable darkness. Here is where the abjection of a novel comes to be seen as abject on a psychoanalytical level. It recalls in the reader a primary knowledge that can be felt or glimpsed at but is always and forever forgotten. Already, the impression of having forgotten what was known makes the reader insecure.

I’ll need to revise Kristeva’s psychoanalytical bit before applying it to these novels. That I will also do tomorrow...