This is an investigation on writing, through writing, with writing, on and in thinking with Julia Kristeva’s theory on abjection. This paper aims to research the subject of abjection as writing and does so by reading the meaning of solitude in the writings of Maurice Blanchot, Marguerite Duras and primarily the work Aqua Viva by Clarice Lispector. This paper wishes to establish a philosophical framework for future research within writing as an artistic practice.

This essay explores and compares the depiction of the character Beverly Marsh in Stephen King’s novel IT and Andy Muschietti’s 2017 film adaptation. The literary analysis uses the theoretical concepts of Mulvey’s the Male Gaze, Bartky’s sexual objectification theory, and Kristeva’s abjection. The Male Gaze describes how women are constantly looked upon by an implicit male subject, whether it be characters within the narrative or the spectator outside of it. Sexual objectification refers to how the body can become fragmented into sexual parts when described in an oppressive way. Feelings of abjection can occur when the concepts of subject and object, cultural norms, or sexual differences are challenged. The initial hypothesis was that King’s novel would lean more on patriarchal structures in the way femininity is described. However, the results show that both the original novel and the film depict Beverly in a sexually objectifying way, although the methods differ.

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This thesis concerns how murdered women and their bodies are represented through written and visual language in tabloid crime journalism. Two Swedish high profile murders were chosen through a purposeful sampling, and 436 articles from Sweden's two largest tabloid newspapers, Aftonbladet and Expressen, were thematized through Thematic Analysis. After that, a smaller sample was analyzed in depth through Critical Discourse Analysis and Multimodal Visual Analysis. The results show that murdered women and their bodies are represented as both subjects, objects and abject. However, when constructed as a social subject through personal traits and agency, the personalities of the murdered women were also used to establish a normative objectification of how women ought and ought not to behave. Furthermore, the material body as an object was visually absent from the material but made visible through detailed and repetitive descriptions of violence and interdiscursive connections to popular culture. Consequently, the abject body produced fear within society, but also provided an arena for a shared identity and the restoration of social order, through extensive portrayals of public grief and thorough media coverage of the legal process.             These results contribute both new knowledge and the suggestion of a suitable theoretical framework for further academic research. Hopefully, these findings will also result in an academic, as well as a professional, discussion regarding the current mediated discourse within crime journalism.

Abstract In this Research paper and through my Studio practice, I search for what binds me and separates me from my children. I investigate abjection theories through Julia Kristeva and Georges Bataille and focus on a particular form I call the maternal abject. This occurs at the time an infant separates from its mother, acquires language and maps its own body. I am proposing that the mapping of the body is the point at which an individual perceives social structures and learns about prohibitions and taboos, hence the abject. I also investigate the relationship between the maternal abject and the artistic process through the writings of Kristeva. Abjection is illustrated through the works of Mona Hatoum, Fiona Hall, Hieronymus Bosch, and Paul Quinn. The maternal abject is illustrated through the works of Mary Kelly, Cindy Sherman, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois. A possible reading of the maternal abject is given through the works of Gregory Crewdson, Joel-Peter Witkin and Francis Bacon. The studio work is in two parts. The first part is a series of layered photomedia images. The layers consist of a naked female body, which has been merged with Renaissance like Madonna and Child images. Texture, such as stones and spikes, is embedded to signify the fragility and strength of the body. Children are also present and are merged with the adult female body. All images are cradled in a darkened atmosphere in order to draw the viewer inside the images. The second part is a bassinet, which has been drilled and pierced by thousands of pearl-headed steel pins. This piece signifies the dichotomy of the motherhood experience, which on the one hand is rewarding and fulfilling and on the other an abject and isolating experience of no apparent economic value. The two parts interact so that the bassinet piece with its threatening exterior acts as an aggressor towards the photomedia images.

This book is a monograph about Anna Świrszczyńska’s poetry. It may be described as one woman’s attempt to read another woman’s literary work by taking into account established canons as well as the tools of feminist literary analysis. Part One begins with a discussion of Świrszczyńska’s biography (Chapter One). It then moves on to an overview of critical (mainly male) reactions to Świrszczyńska’s work (Chapter Two), with special regard to Czesław Miłosz’s contribution to its interpretation and popularization (Chapter Three). In Part Two there are three principal discussions: 1) of Anna Świrszczyńska’s early work Wiersze i proza [Poems and Prose] (1936), in which the poet develops her specific female view of European art and culture as disintegrated into incongruent fragments. Her premonition of the apocalypse, which is soon to be fulfilled in the events of World War II, finds its expression in the poet’s desperate attempts to unite the fragments of a shattered culture into individualized versions of myths (Chapter Four); 2) of the collection Budowałam barykadę [Building the Barricade] (1974), in which what is most crucial to the poet (biographically and poetically) is expressed – the encounter with human suffering in an inhuman world. Following this, her poetic view of the mortal body exposed to suffering under an empty sky becomes a well established motif in her work (Chapter Five); 3) of the collection Jestem baba (1972), in which Świrszczyńska introduces into poetry, by making the non-poetical “baba” her lyric heroine, the “outlawed feminine” and, as a result, revolutionizes the language of poetry and poetic representation, which leads in turn to liberating herself from the hegemony of the totalizing male gaze. In this way her anti-world is created (Chapter Six). The “world” is understood here as a male term – one might say that Świrszczyńska creates a “woman’s anti-world” as a place where the woman herself has to regain the right to name things according to her own terms.

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La littérature est une source d'où jaillissent les flots intarissables du paradoxe ; c'est dans cet entrelacement de dichotomies que nous nous sommes immergées pour percevoir l'unité sous-jacente derrière l'oxymore que constitue le titre de notre thèse : " une poétique de l'abjection dans la littérature gothique américaine postmoderne. " Si nous nous sommes tournées vers Stephen King, Peter Straub et Chuck Palahniuk et avons mis l'accent sur trois de leurs œuvres précises, notre démonstration se veut être transposable à l'ensemble de leurs écrits. Nous nous sommes interrogées sur la nature de l'abjection et sur sa prééminence dans une société américaine portant le sceau du puritanisme. Marqués par le Romantisme et le Gothique anglais, nos auteurs ont su donner aux thématiques caractérisant ces mouvements une voie nouvelle. Situer nos œuvres dans la lignée du gothique postmoderne nous permet d'osciller sur le paradigme de l'excès et de l'incomplétude, de la déconstruction et de l'unité. Le thème de la fragmentation apparaît comme l'un des fils d'Ariane permettant aux auteurs de tisser autour des lecteurs leur toile arachnéenne. Ce démantèlement qui affecte à la fois la dimension narrative et thématique des récits contribue à leur effet patchwork et subversif, nous liant à notre problématique postmoderne. Les paradoxes engendrés par nos récits leur donnent leur force et expliquent leur fascination sur le public. Nos pérégrinations menant à l'ouverture des différentes portes de l'interprétation révèlent que l'abjection devient source d'une nouvelle esthétique. Le laid peut véhiculer de la beauté et du sublime. L'harmonie qui existe dans le monde de la déchéance qui nous est dépeint explique l'emprise hypnotique de la littérature de l'abjection sur le lecteur. Source de poétique, celle-ci procure un plaisir de la lecture quasi jouissif pour ceux qui se laissent transporter par la magie créatrice de nos auteurs.

This thesis examines representations of cancer in contemporary art, with a particular focus on unruly, un-idealized bodies at risk. In bringing together the discourses of art history and medicine, its aim is to engage conventions of visualizing cancer, and more importantly, to highlight the ways in which contemporary artists challenge dominant representations, re-imagining the cancerous body from an embodied perspective. Chapter One provides a context for images of cancer by examining an artistic account of how medicine constructs the body against an artists representation of her own cancerous body. Theorizing cancer as an abject condition, Chapter Two examines representational strategies for visualizing cancer that trouble distinctions between inside/outside, self/other, subject/object, healthy/diseased. Building on themes of gender, health, and identity, Chapter Three considers representations of chemotherapy-induced hair loss and baldness as the most visible signs of cancer, but highly unstable and performative ones that call the representational status of the disease into question. / History of Art, Design and Visual Culture