The abject: disgusting and demeaning and sex

[Pure]

The abject: the disgusting and the demeaning and sex

Consider--

bringing someone to an abject state
being brought oneself to an abject state

"abjecting" something, in this author's terms, means distancing oneself from something because it appears loathsome. 'abjection,' as a feeling, is hard to define but like an eerie loathing, sinking, horrifying fear--and attraction.

of course you cannot distance yourself from your own bodily fluids or that which is within you.

so settling, resolving issues with the abject is not possible. in the end, as the author says, the whole body becomes abject (disgusting to those alive).

acts with this abject quality include the sinister, the scheming, the hypocritical. they are often labeled 'corrupt.' we find them loathsome but fascinating. (e.g., Iago).

how are disgusting things and acts tied with sex? with perversion?
----
Note: I don't pretend to understand every sentence, below, but perhaps among the BDSM literati there are some who can help 'translate' or summarize the message better than I have done, above.



--Julia Kristeva, "Approaching Abjection"

[Note: This is excerpts from chapter one of Kristeva's book, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Kristeva, by the way, was born in Bulgaria and is considered one of the most influential contemporary French theorists.]

No Beast is there without glimmer of infinity,
No eye so vile nor abject that brushes not
Against lightning from on high, now tender, now fierce.
--Victor Hugo, La Légende des siècles


[1-6 excerpts]
NEITHER SUBJECT NOR OBJECT
There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects.

When I am beset by abjection, the twisted braid of affects and thoughts I call by such a name does not have, properly speaking, a definable object. The abject is not an ob-ject facing me, which I name or imagine.
And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master. Without a sign (for him), it beseeches a discharge, a convulsion, a crying out. To each ego its object, to each superego its abject. It is not the white expanse or slack boredom of repression, not the translations and transformations of desire that wrench bodies, nights, and discourse; rather it is a brutish suffering that "I" puts up with, sublime and devastated, for "I" deposits it to the father's account …

THE IMPROPER/UNCLEAN
Loathing an item of food, a piece of filth, waste, or dung. The spasms and vomiting that protect me. The repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, and muck. The shame of compromise, of being in the middle of treachery. The fascinated start that leads me toward and separates me from them.
Food loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection. When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of milk - harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as a nail pairing - I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire. Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it.

That detail, perhaps an insignificant one, but one that they ferret out, emphasize, evaluate, that trifle turns me inside out, guts sprawling; it is thus that they see that "I" am in the process of becoming an other at the expense of my own death. During that course in which "I" become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. .

The corpse (or cadaver: cadere, to fall), that which has irremediably come a cropper, is cesspool, and death; it upsets even more violently the one who confronts it as fragile and fallacious chance. A wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death. In the presence of signified death - a flat encephalograph, for instance - I would understand, react, or accept. No, as in true theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live.

These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border. Such wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss, nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit -- cadere, cadaver. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us.

Any crime, because it draws attention to the fragility of the law, is abject, but premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are even more so because they heighten the display of such fragility. He who denies morality is not abject, there can be grandeur in amorality and even in crime that flaunts its disrespect for the law - rebellious, liberating, and suicidal crime. Abjection, on the other hand, is immoral, sinister, scheming, and shady: a terror that dissembles, a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for barter instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sets you up, a friend who stabs you.
-----
9. The question remains as to the ordeal, a secular one this time, that abjection can constitute for someone who, in what is termed knowledge of castration, turning away from perverse dodges, presents himself with his own body and ego as the most precious non-objects; they are no longer seen in their own right but forfeited, abject. The termination of analysis can lead us there, as we shall see. Such are the pangs and delights of masochism.
-----
31. The abject is related to perversion. The sense of abjection that I experience is anchored in the superego. The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them. It kills in the name of life - a progressive despot; it lives at the behest of death - an operator in genetic experimentations; it curbs the other's suffering for its own profit - a cynic (and a psychoanalist); it establishes narcissistic power while pretending to reveal the abyss - an artist who practices his art as a "business." Corruption is its most common, most obvious appearance. That is the socialized appearance of the abject.

 

[catalina_francisco]

Looks like an enticing and fascinating topic Pure but it is late here and have a huge day coming up, so I will return ASAP to see if I can offer anything to the discussion. Nice to see you in these parts again BTW.

Catalina

 

[TaintedB]

Hard to comment on this one. I've never seen abject used in this way, and I don't mean as a verb. To me abject has always meant servile, humble, submissive, squirming worm, etc. Never seen it used to portray an actively vile, evil, or disgusting property or force and I kind of resent that author's bizarre hijack of the meaning of this fine word! But he or she is probably ESL so I forgive them.

PS: I could use a good abjectfying right about now. With everybody liking my pictures I am getting too big for my britches!

 

[AngelicAssassin]

Consider--

bringing someone to an abject state ...

Am i in the ballpark with the definitions in the following link Pure?

Click me.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Pure in the house.

Respect.

 

[Pure]

hi angelic,
yes, those are some standard definitions, and they have a degree of overlap with the 'special definitions' proposed. i don't see any big problem: 'abduction' has a common meaning, and well as a special meaning to logicians; 'object' has a common meaning and a special one (partially overlapping) in the psychology area 'object relations.'

in any case, I was hoping for enlightment on the text itself.

 

[AngelicAssassin]

... in any case, I was hoping for enlightment on the text itself.

Not a problem. i'll go back and read again. The first glanceover spiked some nods on my part.

 

[Caitlynne]

Pure in the house.

Respect.

Hello Pure, good to see you.

You've been missed.

I'll be back with some comments on the topic.

~ cait

 

[AngelicAssassin]

Ok, i think i've got it.

First and foremost, i respect life. i respect the thoughts and beliefs of others. What i'm about to post struck a major chord elsewhere. Be advised, if you click the links (who knows how long it will last) you have a shock coming.

Pure, i'm having difficulty putting this into words, so i'm going to pass along a discussion from elsewhere. Without going into the standard litany of respect for the dead, here goes.

i'll mark my comment, but will keep the anonymity of others intact.

This is a pic of a suicide bomber stopped "dead" in his tracks in the green zone. Click me.

Stories smories. Pics and vid pretty much tell the important parts of the stories anyway. I love some good incoming vids, but I really love dumb asses that can't even kill themselves right. Cracks me up.

I wonder what is on his mind now....other than fly shit lol

As for the picture - a bit more professionalism would be desirable. Why don't "we" show 'em that we got ethical standards and that we have a minimum of respect for dead bodies. B/c how could we ever complain
about them showing fallen fellow coalition soldiers then?

Just a thought. :roll:

4, you make a very good point. As soon as I read it I thought about taking it down. Then it struck me. This POS is not a soldier, hes not a"freedom fighter". He is a sub-human robot, hell-bent on killing, not only american troops, but his own Muslim women and children just to prove a point. He deserves no sympathy or respect from me or anyone else.

I'm sure thats what they say when they drag an American's body through the streets naked. Because of this, I'll change my text, but not my mind. Its now simply documentation, not a degrading taunt or chest pounding display.

Thank you.

They already do 4. They all ready do.

This, or any other "war" or "conflict" is never pretty, or politically correct.

No matter how hard the politicians, or the whiners cry or beat their desktops over it.

What was shown is FREAKING REALITY, plain and simple.

You are right 2. But: How can we say we are better then they are and do the same things?

Well I can only give you my answer as a Combat Veteran who has been dealing with these creatures fulltime since day one. I'm not a politician.

"I'm not trying to say or even be any better then they are nor am I trying to do the same things. I'm trying my damnest, with all my energy to be much worse then they are and do far far worse things. And insure that the kinds of people they surround themselves with know that I will."

My answer no one elses.

http://www.bomb-tech.com/images/jtacandasts.wmv

Thanks 7. As for the rest, "Splash, over."

"Splash, out."

Well I can only give you my answer as a Combat Veteran who has been dealing with these creatures fulltime since day one. I'm not a politician.

"I'm not trying to say or even be any better then they are nor am I trying to do the same things. I'm trying my damnest, with all my energy to be much worse then they are and do far far worse things. And insure that the kinds of people they surround themselves with know that I will."

My answer no one elses.

x2...I am not saying that the picture is right, while there, when the shit went down, I didn't immediately try and cover the enemy body or move it out of sight - I didn't take any pictures or allow my troops to, but the impact on the other insurgents to see there own laying in filth has its benefits...

I lost soldiers, saw soldiers blown in half, and watched or treated many others that were wounded - including myself - dealing with these bastards. I want them to know that if they raise a weapon, bury a bomb, act as a "marker/look out/courier/scout/intel collector/aiming stake/financer/etc.", that I am coming for them and I will terminate them with EXTREME prejudice, and yes, I enjoyed my job and I enjoyed terminating the little sacks of shit that were trying to kill me AND detonate bombs on roads with innocent men, women, and children - does that make me twisted or sick - maybe, but I wanted them to realize that me and my troops were the baddest mothers on the block, and if they DARED to - "Come Get Some."

Make sense, Pure?

 

[rosco rathbone]

Wow. We really are just sacs of fluid, eh?

 

[Pure]

sorry angelic, maybe you can summarize your point from all the quotes.

from the text, I do get the idea that cadavers and dead bodies are abject and a kind of repellant object for most, except forensic pathologists, CSI types, etc. Given the popularity of the CSI show, maybe the idea--see below--of our fascinated ambivalence is correct.

 

[shy slave]

Consider--

bringing someone to an abject state
being brought oneself to an abject state

"abjecting" something, in this author's terms, means distancing oneself from something because it appears loathsome. 'abjection,' as a feeling, is hard to define but like an eerie loathing, sinking, horrifying fear--and attraction.

of course you cannot distance yourself from your own bodily fluids or that which is within you.

so settling, resolving issues with the abject is not possible. in the end, as the author says, the whole body becomes abject (disgusting to those alive).

acts with this abject quality include the sinister, the scheming, the hypocritical. they are often labeled 'corrupt.' we find them loathsome but fascinating. (e.g., Iago).

how are disgusting things and acts tied with sex? with perversion?
----
Note: I don't pretend to understand every sentence, below, but perhaps among the BDSM literati there are some who can help 'translate' or summarize the message better than I have done, above.



--Julia Kristeva, "Approaching Abjection"

[Note: This is excerpts from chapter one of Kristeva's book, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Kristeva, by the way, was born in Bulgaria and is considered one of the most influential contemporary French theorists.]

No Beast is there without glimmer of infinity,
No eye so vile nor abject that brushes not
Against lightning from on high, now tender, now fierce.
--Victor Hugo, La Légende des siècles


[1-6 excerpts]
NEITHER SUBJECT NOR OBJECT
There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects.

When I am beset by abjection, the twisted braid of affects and thoughts I call by such a name does not have, properly speaking, a definable object. The abject is not an ob-ject facing me, which I name or imagine.
And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master. Without a sign (for him), it beseeches a discharge, a convulsion, a crying out. To each ego its object, to each superego its abject. It is not the white expanse or slack boredom of repression, not the translations and transformations of desire that wrench bodies, nights, and discourse; rather it is a brutish suffering that "I" puts up with, sublime and devastated, for "I" deposits it to the father's account …

THE IMPROPER/UNCLEAN
Loathing an item of food, a piece of filth, waste, or dung. The spasms and vomiting that protect me. The repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, and muck. The shame of compromise, of being in the middle of treachery. The fascinated start that leads me toward and separates me from them.
Food loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection. When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of milk - harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as a nail pairing - I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire. Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it.

That detail, perhaps an insignificant one, but one that they ferret out, emphasize, evaluate, that trifle turns me inside out, guts sprawling; it is thus that they see that "I" am in the process of becoming an other at the expense of my own death. During that course in which "I" become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. .

The corpse (or cadaver: cadere, to fall), that which has irremediably come a cropper, is cesspool, and death; it upsets even more violently the one who confronts it as fragile and fallacious chance. A wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death. In the presence of signified death - a flat encephalograph, for instance - I would understand, react, or accept. No, as in true theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live.

These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border. Such wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss, nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit -- cadere, cadaver. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us.

Any crime, because it draws attention to the fragility of the law, is abject, but premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are even more so because they heighten the display of such fragility. He who denies morality is not abject, there can be grandeur in amorality and even in crime that flaunts its disrespect for the law - rebellious, liberating, and suicidal crime. Abjection, on the other hand, is immoral, sinister, scheming, and shady: a terror that dissembles, a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for barter instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sets you up, a friend who stabs you.
-----
9. The question remains as to the ordeal, a secular one this time, that abjection can constitute for someone who, in what is termed knowledge of castration, turning away from perverse dodges, presents himself with his own body and ego as the most precious non-objects; they are no longer seen in their own right but forfeited, abject. The termination of analysis can lead us there, as we shall see. Such are the pangs and delights of masochism.
-----
31. The abject is related to perversion. The sense of abjection that I experience is anchored in the superego. The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them. It kills in the name of life - a progressive despot; it lives at the behest of death - an operator in genetic experimentations; it curbs the other's suffering for its own profit - a cynic (and a psychoanalist); it establishes narcissistic power while pretending to reveal the abyss - an artist who practices his art as a "business." Corruption is its most common, most obvious appearance. That is the socialized appearance of the abject.

Pure ~its good to see you back and in your usual style you are making my mind jump through hoops again

These are my thoughts on your post:

Neither subject or object/9/31
To me this relates in a sexual sense to the perversions of our own minds that we cannot give a name to, that we abhor yet are drawn to. The specifics of the perversions are not relevant, what is relevant is that we recognise within ourselves a loathing that we wish to turn from yet are inexorably drawn towards. It could be viewed as the personal balance between a following a perversion we feel is morally wrong and following it through, knowing the cosnequences may be more than we can cope with. And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master. Without a sign (for him), it beseeches a discharge, a convulsion, a crying out.

The Improper/Unclean
To be this is the extension of food issues when viewed as a oral gratification. Watching someone eat can be highly erotic or disgusting depending on the individuals. The conflict between knowing we are disgusting objects of filth and waste but we are also have a need to fill minds and bodies with other kinds of filth including sex and food.

I have read your post so many times, and each time I think I am beginning to grasp a meaning it slides away from me out of reach of my thought processes.
Annoying but curiously fun.

 

[Marquis]

I read Kristeva in college while doing an essay on abjectionable heroes in modern theater. Off-off-broadway in Greenwich Village had a thing for making their protagonists as disgusting as possible in the 60's.

A fascinating angle on what seems to be a recurring theme in your discussions Pure. I'm not quite sure what I have to add to this yet, if anything.

 

[Pure]

poems a propos of abjection (baudelaire)

From the great grandfather of modern artistic treatment of abjection.

http://oldpoetry.com/oprintall/Charles Baudelaire


The Carcass

by Charles Baudelaire


Remember that object we saw, dear soul,
In the sweetness of a summer morn:
At a bend of the path a loathsome carrion
On a bed with pebbles strewn,

With legs raised like a lustful woman,
Burning and sweating poisons,
It spread open, nonchalant and scornful,
Its belly, ripe with exhalations.

The sun shone onto the rotting heap,
As if to bring it to the boil,
And tender a hundredfold to vast Nature
All that together she had joined;

And the sky watched that superb carcass
Like a flower blossom out.
The stench was so strong that on the grass
You thought you would pass out.

Flies hummed upon the putrid belly,
Whence larvae in black battalions spread
And like a heavy liquid flowed
Along the tatters deliquescing.

All together it unfurled, and rose like a wave
And bubbling it sprang forth;
One might have believed that, with a faint breath filled,
The body, multiplying, lived.

And this world gave out a strange music
Like of running water and of wind,
Or of grain in a winnow
Rhythmically shaken and tossed.

Form was erased and all but a vision,
A sketch slow to take shape
On a forgotten canvas, which the artist finishes
From memory alone.

Behind the rocks a fretting bitch
Looked at us with fierce mien
Anxious to retrieve from the corpse
A morsel that she had dropped.

Yet to this rot you shall be like,
To this horrid corruption,
Star of my eyes, sun of desire,
You, my angel and my passion!

Yes, such you shall be, you, queen of all graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath the grass and waxy flowers,
To mold among the skeletons.

Then, oh my beauty! You must tell the vermin,
As it eats you up with kisses,
That I have preserved the form and essence divine
Of my decayed loves.
====


Benediction
by Charles Baudelaire
Written in 1861.

When, by decree of the supreme power,
The Poet appears in this annoyed world,
His mother, blasphemous out of horror
At God's pity, cries out with fists curled:

"Ah! I'd rather You'd will me a snake's skin
Than to keep feeding this monstrous slur!
I curse that night's ephemera are sins
To make my womb atone for pleasure.

"Since You have chosen me from all the brides
To bear the disgust of my dolorous groom
And since I can't throw back into the fires
Like an old love letter this gaunt buffoon

"I'll replace Your hate that overwhelms me
On the instrument of Your wicked gloom
And torture so well this miserable tree
Its pestiferous buds will never bloom!"

She chokes down the eucharist of venom,
Not comprehending eternal designs,
She prepares a Gehenna of her own,
And consecrates a pyre of maternal crimes.

Yet, watched by an invisible seraph,
The disinherited child is drunk on the sun
And in all he devours and in all he quaffs
Receives ambrosia, nectar and honey.

He plays with the wind, chats with the vapors,
Deliriously sings the stations of the cross;
And the Spirit who follows him in his capers
Cries at his joy like a bird in the forest.

Those whom he longs to love look with disdain
And dread, strengthened by his tranquillity,
They seek to make him complain of his pain
So they may try out their ferocity.

In the bread and wine destined for his lips,
They mix in cinders and spit with their wrath,
And throw out all he touches as he grasps it,
And accuse him of putting his feet in their path.

His wife cries out so that everyone hears:
"Since he finds me good enough to adore
I'll weave as the idols of ancient years
A corona of gold as a cover.

"I'll get drunk on nard, incense and myrrh,
Get down on bent knee with meats and wines
To see if in a heart that admires,
My smile denies deference to the divine.

"And, when I tire of these impious farces,
I'll arrange for him my frail and hard nails
Sharpened just like the claws of a harpy
That out of his heart will carve a trail.

"Like a baby bird trembling in the nest
I'll dig out his heart all red from my breast
To slake the thirst of my favorite pet,
And will throw it on the ground with contempt!"

Toward the sky, where he sees a great host,
The poet, serene, lifts his pious arms high
And the vast lightning of his lucid ghost
Blinds him to the furious people nearby:

"Glory to God, who leaves us to suffer
To cure us of all our impurities
And like the best, most rarefied buffer
Prepares the strong for a saint's ecstasies!

"I know that You hold a place for the Poet
In the ranks of the blessed and the saint's legions,
That You invite him to an eternal fete
Of thrones, of virtues, of dominations.

"I know only sorrow is unequaled,
It cannot be encroached on from Hell or Earth
And if I am to braid my mystic wreath,
May I impose it on the universe.

"But the ancient jewels of lost Palmyra,
The unknown metals, pearls from the ocean
By Your hand mounted, they do not suffice,
They cannot dazzle as clearly as this crown

"For it will not be made except from halos
Drawn of pure light in a holy portal
Whose entire splendor, in the eyes of mortals
Is only a mirror, obscure and mournful."


Translated by William A. Sigler

 

[YinandYang]

The way I see it, we all have a darkside. Not in the evil satanic sense (or maybe?), but in the sense that we are all drawn to our own evils. Why are people drawn to horror movies? Why did I sit and watch the 9/11 footage, when it made me feel sick to the core? Why do I love the evil streak in my SO when I see darkness flash through his eyes? These are all limits that I have placed as being right or wrong in my world, but still they continue to attract. How can we as human beings experience what we think of as goodness without experiencing the dark? The whole BDSM and guilt threads see how many people ask themselves this question. Because society has conditioned us to beleive what is right and wrong, what is light or dark. Everyday we battle our own evils in many ways, the woman who hates to be fat, but still can't keep away from the icecream she loathes so much, the man who hates his job but ignores his feelings and ends up working till retirement....and so it goes on. Our minds work on many levels, each conflicting and fighting against some thoughts we may have. Maybe the ultimate submission is giving in to these thoughts and learning to experience all aspects of oneself. I am of the opinion that as long a we keep from hurting others....our mind is there for looking into, no matter how scary that may be

 

[AngelicAssassin]

sorry angelic, maybe you can summarize your point from all the quotes.

from the text, I do get the idea that cadavers and dead bodies are abject and a kind of repellant object for most ...

The discussion you read occurred between military veterans, some still active, others no longer in service, but all on the trigger end that survived. While the superego/ego may decry the loss of innocence on the part of the survivor, and the loss of life on that of the dead, the id still whispers, "better you than me."

 

[catalina_francisco]

This thread died far too early IMHO. The thoughts and topic are endless, not to mention full of potential. Yeah, yeah, I promised to come back and didn't so I think I deserve a severe thrashing.

Catalina

 

[reignophelia]

This thread did die out before its time. Chris Xavier and I were discussing the new Abject Sex thread over in the AH today and he brought this one to my attention. I was hoping some practitioners of the lifestyle could weigh in over there if you have time.

Here is a link if you need a definition of abject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjection

Here is the link for the thread:
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=538335

The topic is leaning more toward comparing BDSM to abject sex at this point. Mind you that dead bodies as well as fecal matter are considered to be abject.
My statement is basically to each their own. I don't think that BDSM is abject sex, but there are some practitioners who blurr the lines by scat, autoerotic asphyxiation, or bloodplay - nothing wrong with that. But it's starting to feel more like a moral debate.

Then some guy came along and started claiming that subs must have low self esteem.

Care to weigh in?

-R

 

[Netzach]

Is the death-wish impulse that makes breathplay hot necessarily abject? I don't see it, I see it as often a very exhalted kind of moment. Likewise the pee thing can be "golden chalices" and whatnot, not my flavor, but for some people.

I just have a hard time being so theoretical about shit and vomit. Shit is shit, vomit is vomit. Isn't the art polemic around illness (a GIANT chunk of the theory of the abject of the 80's) a kind of La Boheme romanticization? Did sick navel gazer elites take it upon themselves to articulate something for everyone? I don't want that culture to dictate the meaning of my illness any more than I want some idiot telling me I pissed of the deity or I'm manifesting bad karma.

What this has to do with my sexuality I remain uncertain. I suppose there's something intimate about experience of the fullest panoply possible of the other person.

 

[reignophelia]

Is the death-wish impulse that makes breathplay hot necessarily abject? I don't see it, I see it as often a very exhalted kind of moment. Likewise the pee thing can be "golden chalices" and whatnot, not my flavor, but for some people.

I just have a hard time being so theoretical about shit and vomit. Shit is shit, vomit is vomit. Isn't the art polemic around illness (a GIANT chunk of the theory of the abject of the 80's) a kind of La Boheme romanticization? Did sick navel gazer elites take it upon themselves to articulate something for everyone? I don't want that culture to dictate the meaning of my illness any more than I want some idiot telling me I pissed of the deity or I'm manifesting bad karma.
What this has to do with my sexuality I remain uncertain. I suppose there's something intimate about experience of the fullest panoply possible of the other person.

Hi Netzach,

I've seen you around. I'm pleased to finally talk with you.

As for the reference to abject theory of the 80s, is there something specific you had in mind? I've been getting bits and pieces, but most of what I'm finding is on Kristeva. I'd like to learn more if you happen to have something tucked away in that beautiful brain of yours.
I don't think an interest in abject things indicates illness at all. Human beings are incredibly curious creatures. We are very sexual creatures as well. We have a tendency to become obsessed with death and gore, almost like we're trying to face our fears in relative safety, so that we won't piss our pants when the real thing comes along. That some would be able to take a step toward sexualizing the abject comes as no real surprise to me.

Besides, if you haven't been pissing of the deity why would I be drinking it every morning before starting my mantra?

Something just popped into my head. I saw a movie on the Independant Channel about a girl who becomes an embalmer or a mortician or something. She becomes obsessed with necrophilia and almost I want to say "tasting" of a persons soul before it goes elsewhere. At the end of the movie her boyfriend kills himself so that she can have the ultimate sexual experience. It's really not as upsetting or graphic as it sounds. It was just weird.
Anybody have any idea what I'm talking about? This is going to bug me until I figure it out. Hmmm...
[/EDIT]
I think I've found it. It was called "Kissed". Here is a review of "Kissed" as juxtaposed with the film "Aftermath". To forewarn you, there is a picture of "Aftermath" in there and it is quite graphic.http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/9707/offscreen_reviews/necrophilic_art.html
-R

 

[Quint]

...........

 

[Pure]

recent 'pure' sighting in bdsm forum.

had he not been beaten to death by huggie dom/mes, in 2004, he would now be 46 years old.

 

[Quint]

...........

 

[Netzach]

Hi Netzach,

I've seen you around. I'm pleased to finally talk with you.

As for the reference to abject theory of the 80s, is there something specific you had in mind? I've been getting bits and pieces, but most of what I'm finding is on Kristeva. I'd like to learn more if you happen to have something tucked away in that beautiful brain of yours.
I don't think an interest in abject things indicates illness at all. Human beings are incredibly curious creatures. We are very sexual creatures as well. We have a tendency to become obsessed with death and gore, almost like we're trying to face our fears in relative safety, so that we won't piss our pants when the real thing comes along. That some would be able to take a step toward sexualizing the abject comes as no real surprise to me.

Besides, if you haven't been pissing of the deity why would I be drinking it every morning before starting my mantra?

Something just popped into my head. I saw a movie on the Independant Channel about a girl who becomes an embalmer or a mortician or something. She becomes obsessed with necrophilia and almost I want to say "tasting" of a persons soul before it goes elsewhere. At the end of the movie her boyfriend kills himself so that she can have the ultimate sexual experience. It's really not as upsetting or graphic as it sounds. It was just weird.
Anybody have any idea what I'm talking about? This is going to bug me until I figure it out. Hmmm...
[/EDIT]
I think I've found it. It was called "Kissed". Here is a review of "Kissed" as juxtaposed with the film "Aftermath". To forewarn you, there is a picture of "Aftermath" in there and it is quite graphic.http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/9707/offscreen_reviews/necrophilic_art.html
-R

The former looks interesting, mainly in a buyable gender reversal of "O" or things of that nature, where the heroine self-obliterates for luvvv.

The latter doesn't do anything for me that reading Bataille doesn't or the opener of Chien Andalou. But Spain gave us Dali so why wouldn't it give us this?

Dead body bogeymen have been making the fine art circuit since the 20's.

I sat through the autopsy in Stan Brakhage. The color filters didn't really make it more poignant.

The only interesting iteration of the big D I've seen lately is footage of the Tibetan Sky burials. This is shockingly like the dog in the second film. You're basically hacked to pieces and fed to a flock of vultures. I never realized how freaking big vultures are. They wait patiently in line for the monks to be done slicing and dicing like big feathered cows. Then you're lofted high into the heavens, shat out as bird poop and fertilize the contested grounds of Tibet and Nepal. Not a bad exit. I saw a rough film of it at the Walker Art Center, basically ethnograpy dressed up with a lack of narration. Hard to be stumped when you go see these things with your friend who hiked Nepal.

How *can* you divorce illness, AIDS art, Hannah Wilkie dying of cancer and showing every possble detail, the brilliant Bob Flanagan and his CF, the whole question of illness of every kind from the theory of the abject in 80's art? All of a sudden those fascinating efflugia were that much more *graphically* and urgently "about death." Instant Meaning capital M. This was the theory of the abject I took in.

Kristeva is something I had inflicted on me in the process of art school. At least she's not Wittig, I guess. If you're dying to know more about what I'm processing and mentally touching base with, try the book "On Edge, performance in the 1980's" or the book "Mind over Matter" published by the Whitney museum to catalog an exhibit of the same name, or look at Wilkie's "so help me Hannah" or anything about Bob F or Ron Athey or the whole bitter Cincinatti Museum Moment because a dying man shoved a bullwhip up his ass at the lens. At death, we liked to say, to elevate it and justify it with funding. (And don't get me wrong, I agree. I am just looking back and wondering where we go after shock. Where we seem to go, if you look at high art at all, is as cool, empty and formal as humanly possible. While there's a war on. Finally we're leaking out cool formal projects that allude to the war vaguely. Give me an art strike a la Motherwell, Johns, et al. only no one would care.)

I have had more intimacy than I could humanly imagine with my one lover who closes the bathroom door with me when he pisses. Go figure. I find it oddly funny. This person is up to the elbows in human illness and discomfort and the abject all day.

My whole project as a person has partially shifted onto the project of meeting death with acceptance, if not dignity (there is no dignity.) Not that I'm terminally ill or anything so dramatic, but was sick enough to have to look at the question with some degree of mindfulness, and some recognition that we're worm food, bird poop, and the terra firma itself, and by we I mean I. It's not hot, sexy, shocking, just is.

 

[reignophelia]

The former looks interesting, mainly in a buyable gender reversal of "O" or things of that nature, where the heroine self-obliterates for luvvv.

The latter doesn't do anything for me that reading Bataille doesn't or the opener of Chien Andalou. But Spain gave us Dali so why wouldn't it give us this?

Dead body bogeymen have been making the fine art circuit since the 20's.

I sat through the autopsy in Stan Brakhage. The color filters didn't really make it more poignant.

The only interesting iteration of the big D I've seen lately is footage of the Tibetan Sky burials. This is shockingly like the dog in the second film. You're basically hacked to pieces and fed to a flock of vultures. I never realized how freaking big vultures are. They wait patiently in line for the monks to be done slicing and dicing like big feathered cows. Then you're lofted high into the heavens, shat out as bird poop and fertilize the contested grounds of Tibet and Nepal. Not a bad exit. I saw a rough film of it at the Walker Art Center, basically ethnograpy dressed up with a lack of narration. Hard to be stumped when you go see these things with your friend who hiked Nepal.

How *can* you divorce illness, AIDS art, Hannah Wilkie dying of cancer and showing every possble detail, the brilliant Bob Flanagan and his CF, the whole question of illness of every kind from the theory of the abject in 80's art? All of a sudden those fascinating efflugia were that much more *graphically* and urgently "about death." Instant Meaning capital M. This was the theory of the abject I took in.

Kristeva is something I had inflicted on me in the process of art school. At least she's not Wittig, I guess. If you're dying to know more about what I'm processing and mentally touching base with, try the book "On Edge, performance in the 1980's" or the book "Mind over Matter" published by the Whitney museum to catalog an exhibit of the same name, or look at Wilkie's "so help me Hannah" or anything about Bob F or Ron Athey or the whole bitter Cincinatti Museum Moment because a dying man shoved a bullwhip up his ass at the lens. At death, we liked to say, to elevate it and justify it with funding. (And don't get me wrong, I agree. I am just looking back and wondering where we go after shock. Where we seem to go, if you look at high art at all, is as cool, empty and formal as humanly possible. While there's a war on. Finally we're leaking out cool formal projects that allude to the war vaguely. Give me an art strike a la Motherwell, Johns, et al. only no one would care.)

I have had more intimacy than I could humanly imagine with my one lover who closes the bathroom door with me when he pisses. Go figure. I find it oddly funny. This person is up to the elbows in human illness and discomfort and the abject all day.

My whole project as a person has partially shifted onto the project of meeting death with acceptance, if not dignity (there is no dignity.) Not that I'm terminally ill or anything so dramatic, but was sick enough to have to look at the question with some degree of mindfulness, and some recognition that we're worm food, bird poop, and the terra firma itself, and by we I mean I. It's not hot, sexy, shocking, just is.

*Slaps palm to forehead* I'm sitting here laughing to myself. It must have been late, or perhaps my brain spilled out my ears last night, but yes, I agree with you that illness does affect 80s abject art and theory. I was delirious and thinking "you mean like mentally ill?" Doh! I actually slapped my palm to my forehead this morning, and yup, you called me on it. I was just being stooopid. My apologies. I've carefully spooned it all back in, and I'm thinking a bit better than I was yesterday.

Thank you for the references by the way. I'll definitely check into them.

I guess for me, I see the abject as touching. Not touching in a lovey dovey sort of way, but it evokes a feeling and response just as an exalted experience would.

In that, I have to ask, is abjection a relative term then? Some might find/ have a different take on something IE for cultural reasons, desensitization, plain old perspective etc etc - right? One persons horror is another persons sacred and spiritual bereavement ritual.

Where do we go when things aren't shocking anymore?
-Reminds me of a bad sci fi movie from the 70s, where the protagonist hero is the only one with "morals."

I was just talking with a friend about a sexual encounter that I had a while back. I anticipated the experience as being abject and humiliating. When I got there I was surprisingly ok with it. A lot of it had to do with the presentation. My friend said something like:" Oh, really? I always thought that was an act of love - like I'm exalting you or something."

I think that takes me back to square one. Where we can't define anything really, or rather we can't define things for anyone but ourselves. - Which I'm ok with. I just always think it's funny when I go searching for answers and there is never anything definite.

You're right. It just is.