Powers of Horror; An Essay on Abjection

APPROACHING ABJECTION 31
gaps <strong>of</strong> a speech saddened because it turned its back on its abject
meaning. If there is analytic jouissance it is there, in the thor-
oughly poetic mimesis that runs through the architecture <strong>of</strong>
speech and extends from coenesthetic image to logical and phan-
tasmatic articulations. Without for that matter biologizing lan-
guage, and while breaking away from identification by means
<strong>of</strong> interpretation, analytic speech is one that becomes "incar-
nate" in the full sense <strong>of</strong> the term. On that condition only, it
is "cathartic"—meaning thereby that it is the equivalent, for
the analyst as well as for the analysand, not <strong>of</strong> purification but
<strong>of</strong> rebirth with and against abjection.
This preliminary survey <strong>of</strong> abjection, phenomenological on
the whole, will now lead me to a more straightforward con-
sideration <strong>of</strong> analytic theory on the one hand, <strong>of</strong> the history <strong>of</strong>
religions on the other, and finally <strong>of</strong> contemporary literary
experience.
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