Abjection in the artistic process
I have looked at theories of abjection through Kristeva and the interpretive
writings of Grosz; the role of the maternal in abjection theory and the relationship
between acquisition of language, a child’s separation from the mother and
the mapping of the body, the latter being a signifier in social orders, taboos
and sin. Through this search to understand my fascination with the abject and
its manifestation in my own art practice, I begin to examine the relationship
between the artistic process and the maternal abject.
First, I examine Kristeva’s analysis of the artistic process. She says, that the aesthetic process consists in finding a certain harmony between the
“semiotic functions and the energy discharges that connect and orient the body to the mother.” 1.
She explains that the aesthetic process is a form of pursuit to resolve or harmonise the conflict between the semiotic and the forces which gyrates the person towards the mother’s body.
"We must emphasise that "drives" are always already ambiguous,
simultaneously assimilating and destructive; this dualism... makes the semiotized
body a place of permanent scission."2
In an interview on the Tate exhibition “Rites of Passage, Art for the End
of the Century”, she explains how the art works have a cathartic value
and how the artists who produce them are in a temporary state of harmony while
experiencing a malaise. She further explains however that the artistic process
“does not seal the [malaise] off or ignore it.” 3
The abject by definition is that which disturbs identity, systems or orders.
It is by its very nature the permanent scission or crisis, which resides in
the life of the individual. This scission has its roots at the time the infant
separates from its mother and performs its first act of non-corporal abjection.
It is also the time the body of the infant is mapped through the teaching of
the language and the initiation of what is taboo and what is the norm. Through
this mapping, the individual is introduced to the particular social structure
it will grow in. For example, in a specific Islamic culture, a baby girl who
is not yet verbal learns through signs and while acquiring language, that hair
on a girl’s head must be covered, whereas hair on the body is considered
unclean and must be removed. Therefore, a girl’s hair becomes a signifier
for a range of prohibitions, which form the basis of that particular social
order. At a particular time in history and in a certain social hierarchy, Chinese
girl’s feet had to remain small and were painfully bound restricting the
girl/woman’s movement. A girl or woman’s feet therefore become a signifier
for a complete set of social rules and expectations. In Jewish and Islamic cultures
a baby boy’s circumcision is performed as a ritual and become the basis
of what is clean and unclean within a social and spiritual order.
These three examples illustrate how the mapping of an infant’s body is
the building block of social structures and the possible site of scission or
malaise in an artist. Shirin Neshat is an artist who illustrates well how the
body is mapped through the veil and how this mapping becomes a malaise or a
scission in the life of Neshat. In her work Rapture and many of her previous
works, she focuses on the meaning of the hidden female body in an Islamic culture,
in particular the veil. She also illustrates how it acts as a object of repression.
I quote James Rondeau in an explanation of her work:
“Neshat maintains a critical distance that has allowed her to locate both
the poetics and the power of the veil. At the same time that she celebrates
the strength and beauty of Islamic women, however, she remains keenly aware
of the horrors of repression.” 4
Neshat shows us how when she expresses her abject experience in a particular
social or spiritual order, she inadvertently refers to the maternal abject which,
as mentioned above, constitutes the mapping of the body (in this instance the
covering or removal of a woman’s hair), separation from the mother, and
acquisition of language.
Kristeva postulates that there exists in the life of the artist an oscillating
continuum between the production of art and the coming to terms with the presence
of a scission or separation.
It then follows, from a psychoanalytical point of view, that in order for the
artist to exist, s/he has to experience a state of conflict echoing the original
abject experience that begins at the time the child tries to separate from its
mother. The maternal abject with its scission and malaise therefore becomes
the driving force behind my own art practice. Through becoming a mother I have
become a witness to the formation of the maternal abject in my children. This
observation has led me to examine my own work in that light, and that of other
artists who illustrated the maternal abject in their own work.
©2001 Mireille Astore
1. Oliver, Kelly (ed.) The Portable Kristeva , Columbia University Press. New York 1997
2. ibid
3. Penwarden, Charles. “Of Word and Flesh an interview with Julia Kristeva” in Rites of Passage, Art for the End of the Century. London: Tate Gallery,1995
4. Rondeau, James, Shirin Neshat in Biennale of Sydney 2000. Biennale of Sydney Ltd. Sydney, 2000.