The Abject, the Object, and the Thing

Abstract

Julia Kristeva’s conception of the abject should be read as the inheritor of modernist aesthetics, as inaugurated by Kant. If Kant’s Critique of Judgment opens up the possibility that aesthetic reflective judgment is a condition of possibility for scientific rationality, then Kristeva’s “abject,” as it relates to her conception of the sacred, situates this movement within the immanent sensuality of the world and the often repudiated aspects of the body and their role in the production of meaning. Taken together, these themes offer a means by which to see philosophy itself as a work of historical mourning, through its proximity or distance to its truth, and in turn, this reading suggests Kristeva’s significant contribution to the philosophical tradition.

Keywords

• abject
• Kristeva
• Kant
• aesthetics
• mourning