For next Wednesday read the first nine pages of Julia Kristeva’s essay on abjection, Powers of Horror  (to the break at the top of page 9). The essay can be found here. This will be hard going and you should plan on consulting with group members during the week.

Your goal for the week is to create a kind of hypertext of the essay’s opening pages. You should look up words and concept you don’t understand, in essence creating a kind of glossary of the ideas referred to in the essay.

For class Wednedsay come with these notes and include your reflections on your understanding of what Kristeva means by abjection, how does she say it functions both outside the individual (as an external stimulus) and within the individual, and how might her thoughts about abjection apply to our discussions about racial- and gender-based hatreds and prejudices. Additionally mark three places in the text you sense are important which nonetheless are unclear or confusing to you.