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ABJECTION A term drawn from psychoanalytic theory that refers to specific acts of exclusion. Etymologically derived from the Latin abjectus, meaning to throw out, it is Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982) who most comprehensively addresses its complexity.
For Kristeva, the widely held view that the acquisition of language sees the child enter the symbolic order and sever their presymbolic maternal connection is too simplistic. In Powers of Horror she argues that prior to this developmental stage being reached, a preceding state must already have been attained. For Kristeva, entrance to the symbolic order is dependent upon a rejection of the mother before the acquisition of language and the child's unconscious ...
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