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Abjection
In critical theory, abjection is the state of being cast off and separated from norms and rules, especially on the scale of society and morality. The term has been explored in post-structuralism as that which inherently disturbs conventional identity and cultural concepts. Julia Kristeva explored an influential and formative overview of the concept in her 1980 work '' Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection'', where she describes subjective horror (abjection) as the feeling when an individual experiences or is confronted by the sheer experience of what Kristeva calls one's typically repressed "corporeal reality", or an intrusion of the Real in the Symbolic Order. Kristeva's concept of abjection is used commonly to analyze popular cultural narratives of horror, and discriminatory behavior manifesting in misogyny, homophobia and genocide. The concept of abjection builds on the traditional psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, whose studies often narrowed in on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Creed
Barbara Creed (born 30 September 1943) is a professor of Film theory, cinema studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of six books on gender, feminist film theory, and the Horror film, horror genre. Creed is a graduate of Monash University, Monash and La Trobe University, La Trobe universities where she completed doctoral research using the framework of psychoanalysis and feminist theory to examine horror films. She is known for her cultural criticism. Early life Barbara Creed is a well-known Australian commentator on film and media. She is a graduate of Monash University, Monash and La Trobe University, completing her doctrinal thesis and research on the cinema of horror. Creed pursued the use of feminist theory and psychoanalysis in her examination of horror films. She currently works within the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne where she is a professor of Film theory, Cinema Studi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Real
In continental philosophy, the Real refers to reality in its unmediated form. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is an "impossible" category because of its inconceivability and opposition to expression. In depth psychology The Real is the intelligible form of the horizon of truth of the field-of- objects that has been disclosed. As the Real Order of the Borromean knot in Lacanianism, it is opposed in the unconscious to the Imaginary, which encompasses fantasy, dreams and hallucinations. In depth psychology, the Real can be described as a " negative space", analogous to a "black hole", a philosophical void of sociality and subjectivity, a traumatic consensus of intersubjectivity, or as an absolute noumenalness between signifiers. Lewis states that the Real can be a presence or is a substance and cites Derrida's claim that the real is authenticity. Jacques Lacan defines the ''Real'' as a '' plenum'', a nature beyond culture that is contradistinct from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Uncanny (Freud)
The uncanny is the psychological experience of an event or thing that is unsettling in a way that feels oddly familiar, rather than simply mysterious. This phenomenon is used to describe incidents where a familiar entity is encountered in a frightening, eerie, or taboo context.D. Bate, ''Photography and Surrealism'' (2004) pp. 39–40. Ernst Jentsch set out the concept of the uncanny, later elaborated on by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay "", which explores the eeriness of dolls and waxworks. For Freud, the uncanny is located in the strangeness of the ordinary. Expanding on the idea, psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan wrote that the uncanny places us "in the field where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure", resulting in an irreducible anxiety that gestures to the Real. The concept has since been taken up by a variety of thinkers and theorists like roboticist Masahiro Mori's uncanny valley and Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection. Etymo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liminality
In anthropology, liminality () is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way (which completing the rite establishes). The concept of liminality was first developed in the early twentieth century by folklorist Arnold van Gennep and later taken up by Victor Turner. More recently, usage of the term has broadened to describe political and cultural change as well as rites. During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt. The dissolution of order during liminality ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva (; ; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, ; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and novelist who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She has taught at Columbia University, and is now a professor emerita at Université Paris Cité. The author of more than 30 books, including '' Powers of Horror'', ''Tales of Love'', ''Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia'', ''Proust and the Sense of Time'', and the trilogy ''Female Genius'', she has been awarded Commander of the Legion of Honor, Commander of the Order of Merit, the Holberg International Memorial Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Vision 97 Foundation Prize, awarded by the Havel Foundation. Kristeva became influential in international critical analysis, cultural studies and feminism after publishing her first book, ''Semeiotikè'', in 1969. Her sizeable body of work includes books and essays that address intertextuality, the semioti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alien (film)
''Alien'' is a 1979 Science fiction film, science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. It follows a spaceship crew who investigate a derelict spaceship and are hunted by a Xenomorph, deadly extraterrestrial creature. The film stars Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. It was produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill (director), Walter Hill through their company Brandywine Productions and was distributed by 20th Century-Fox. Giler and Hill revised and made additions to the script; Shusett was the executive producer. The alien creatures and environments were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, while the concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the other sets. ''Alien'' premiered on May 25, 1979, the opening night of the fourth Seattle International Film Festival. It received a wide release ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space exploration, time travel, Parallel universes in fiction, parallel universes, and extraterrestrials in fiction, extraterrestrial life. The genre often explores human responses to the consequences of projected or imagined scientific advances. Science fiction is related to fantasy (together abbreviated wikt:SF&F, SF&F), Horror fiction, horror, and superhero fiction, and it contains many #Subgenres, subgenres. The genre's precise Definitions of science fiction, definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Major subgenres include hard science fiction, ''hard'' science fiction, which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction, ''soft'' science fiction, which focuses on social sciences. Other no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horror Fiction
Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare an audience. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society. History Before 1000 The horror genre has ancient origins, with roots in folklore and religious traditions focusing on death, the afterlife, evil, the demonic, and the principle of the thing embodied in the person. These manifested in stories of beings such as demons, witches, vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. Some early European horror-fiction were the Ancient Greeks and Ancie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Existentialist
Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and value, existentialist thought often includes concepts such as existential crises, angst, courage, and freedom. Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought. Among the 19th-century figures now associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning. The word ''existentialism'', however, was not coined until the mid 20th century, during which it became most associated with contemporaneous philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Genet
Jean Genet (; ; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels '' The Thief's Journal'' and '' Our Lady of the Flowers'' and the plays '' The Balcony'', '' The Maids'' and '' The Screens''. Biography Early life Genet's mother was a prostitute who raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption. Thereafter Genet was raised in the provincial town of Alligny-en-Morvan, in the Nièvre department of central France. His foster family was headed by a carpenter and, according to Edmund White's biography, was loving and attentive. While he received excellent grades in school, his childhood involved a series of attempts at running away and incidents of petty theft. Detention and military service For this and other misdemeanors, including repeated acts of vagrancy, he was sent at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Thief's Journal
''The Thief's Journal'' (''Journal du voleur'', published in 1949) is a novel by Jean Genet. Although autobiographical to some degree, Genet’s exploitation of poetic language results in an ambiguity throughout the text. Superficially, the novel follows the author’s progress though 1930s Europe, wearing little and enduring hunger, contempt, and fatigue: “the life of the vermin”. The protagonist is “hot for crime” and romanticizes criminality as well as homosexuality, two facets of his identity that keep him ostracized from the general public. About the author's life Jean Genet was born on December 19, 1910, and died aged 75 on April 15, 1986. He was abandoned by his mother, who worked as a sex worker, to a foundling home, and then was later taken in by a foster family. When his foster mother died, however, his status within the house changed and he was seen as a domestic servant. He stole and ran away from reformatory school repeatedly between the ages of fifteen an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Dissonance
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. Being confronted by situations that challenge this dissonance may ultimately result in some change in their cognitions or actions to cause greater alignment between them so as to reduce this dissonance. Relevant items of cognition include peoples' actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, Value (ethics), values, and things in the Natural environment, environment. Cognitive dissonance exists without signs but surfaces through psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of conflicting things. According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people automatically try to resolve the conflict, usually by reframing a side to make the combination congruent. Discomfort is triggered by beliefs clashing with new information or by having to conceptually re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
