MYRREN GOODALL
In Conversation With Julia Kristeva and Carolee Schneemann: Performance, Philosophy and the Proper Body
May 2025
Fine Art BA Hons Dissertation
DOI 10 20933/100001379
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Abstract
This dissertation is an exploration of Julia Kristeva’s essay on abjection, “Powers of Horror” (Kristeva, (1980). This body of writing discusses the Abject, The Proper Body and the Semiotic. Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll (Schneemann, 1975) is also an important stature in this dissertation. In this text, Kristeva’s concepts and Schneemann’s performance are brought together to enrich one another’s concepts and see how they work in tandem with one another. Through this conversation, the research explores how both Kristeva and Schneemann engage with the body as a site of transformation, rebellion and language, where the abject emerges not only as a concept but as a physical. In placing Carolee Schneemann and Julia Kristeva in the same conversation, the dissertation oTers a new scope on Kristeva’s theories and argues that Kristeva’s work provides an insightful framework for understanding the dynamics of body politics and the consideration of diTerent forms of bodies as the site of abjection.
Glossary of Concepts
In this section, you will find a list of concepts and coined terms that appear in this dissertation, according to Julia Kristeva’s essay on abjection (Kristeva, 1980) The list below refers to concepts and terms that are closely aligned with or created by feminist psychoanalyst philosopher Julia Kristeva. The only exception is Freudian Repression, which is based on Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory of the repressed.
Abject - A seminal state where boundaries begin to breakdown, where there is gesture and nuance. Where we are confronted with an archaic space before language constrictions such as Subject and object. An intangible and truly undefinable state.
Abjection – The eTect of the Abject, it is when the mortal peril is no longer idle and is violently breaking the boundaries between Self and other. Often occurs when the Self is confronted with mortality and morality.
Feminine Archetype/Ideal - A construct shaped by cultural and patriarchal normative. The expectation that women are to be Self-sacrificial and passive, their own desires and agency are suppressed.
Freudian Repression – An unconscious eTort of pushing distressing thoughts. Memories and desires outside of the conscious psyche and are absorbed by the Self. The repressed is believed to aTect our desires and influence behavior.
Maternal Archetype The maternal archetype, or (M)Other, is the embodiment of abjection. It is the site of life and decay; it assimilates Subject and Other. It is the intersection of symbolic and semiotic, where the need for rupture originates when the Self is formed
Other – Refers to the Abject, to anything out with the confines of societal structural normative, even narrowly.
Proper Body – A vessel that is to bear no trace, no debt to nature. It is pure and maintained; it does not debase itself as a leaky vessel. It adheres not to fixed boundaries that are given but to enacted boundaries through ongoing and continuous chronic domestic labours that maintain the appearance that there is no connection between the vessel and the Abject. Abjection and the ongoing process of thrusting aside the ever-haunting is what constitutes and undoes the Proper Body.
Semiotic – A theory on language coined by Kristeva. It’s based in nuance and gesture; it manifests in things like tone and rhythm. Its fluid and disruptive to the confined structure of language.
Symbolic – A language theory coined by Kristeva. It works in tandem with the semiotic and yet also juxtaposes it. It is structural language that follows the rule of the game. It is order in regard to language, culture and societal normative. It is stable and structured and has meaning.
Introduction
“The body must bear no trace of its debt to nature: it must be clean and proper in order to be fully symbolic.” (Kristeva, P.102)
Philosophy and Performance are incredibly intertwined; they are both unstable, it’s mess, it’s an unravelling. Performance is a direct exchange of energy between the performer and the audience. Philosophy is a direct exchange of scope between the writer and the reader. They both carry a suspense of expectation.
In this body of writing, I am going to explore the intrinsic root system that feminist psychoanalytic philosopher Julia Kristeva lays out in her essay, The Powers of Horror (Kristeva, 1980). I will be discussing her thesis around performativity, her concept of the
Proper Body and of course the Abject. The Abject, according to Kristeva, is a thrusting away that occurs between the Subject and an aTect. The Proper Body is the idea of being untraceable as animal and staying within in the confines of societal structure.
However, I will be taking us through this exploration and looking at Kristeva’s work through not just a theoretical lens, but also thinking of the writing as a performance.
Kristeva’s language works in tandem with performance artist Carolee Schneemann; specifically, I will be discussing the intersection between Kristeva’s theories and Schneemann’s piece ‘Interior Scroll’ (Schneemann, 1975). Kristeva and Schneemann are both central figures in academic feminist discussion, as their careers are provocative and confront how we view and theorize boundaries and body Kristeva’s concept of the Abject, as outlined in Powers of Horror (Kristeva, 1980), explains that
there is a process of expulsion. There is expulsion of elements concerning the body in order to maintain a sense of boundaries and identity. Kristeva’s commentary on the Proper Body is centered around the notion of performativity; that we perform to ascertain that as an individual we are maintaining boundaries between Human and Other, and the Abject disrupts this cohesion. What if we were to take the writing not just at face value, but instead dissolve the boundaries that have been assumed with the structure of her theories and look at it as something else entirely: a performance.
Performance is an oTering. Kristeva lays out so graciously and poetically for the audience an oTering of insight and knowledge, of language for what is already known but not articulated. In Powers of Horror (Kristeva, 1980), she is showing us how we, as individuals under a collective, are performing to achieve this Proper Body Ideal, how we are unravelling at the seams due to being aTected by the Abject and other rumbling below the surface. That primal call out of like to like. In utilizing this oTering from Kristeva in conjunction with Schneemann’s corporeal and visceral confrontation of this breaking down of boundaries and the unmasking of the Other. In addition to this we can use this analysis of Interior Scroll (Schneemann, 1975) to see how this piece challenges and reimagines how boundaries of the body, gender, and academia are explored in feminist art and theory. The story which I wish to tell is one that surrounds the domestic feminine, one that creates a conversation between Julia Kristeva, a writer who has been a corner stone for feminist philosophies when exploring what it is to be feminine and the societal structures that symptomatically fill us with a chronic need to eradicate any sympathy towards our nature and Carolee Schneemann. A woman who has been historically crucified for using her body as a vehicle for confronting patriarchal structure and suTocation. The culmination of bringing these vast fields in conversation with each
other will allow for us to show that they not only inform each other, but inform more widely the way in which we engage with Kristeva’s concepts and more specifically her essay. In this dissertation, I shall explain the expansivity the concepts of the Abject, the Proper Body and the concepts that surround them. I will also discuss how Julia Kristeva’s writings on these profound concepts aid to give language to Carolee Schneemann’s visual works that traverse the minefield that is boundary, body and the domestic feminine.
Julia
Kristeva –
The Abject, The Semiotic and The Proper Body
To begin my analysis in this dissertation, I shall start with picking up the thread of psychoanalytic philosopher Julia Kristeva. In this chapter I am going to lay out Kristeva’s concepts of the Abject, the Proper Body and the semiotic. I am choosing to pick up this thread of Kristeva first as it is crucial that we understand the roots by which the domestic feminine is defined and what it is tangled with. The Abject is an undefinable, slippery concept. It is a thing, which is not really a thing, that can only be talked around; yet we have all experienced it. The Abject is onerous by nature and the unravelling of it is a diTicult task. Kristeva’s concepts are closely twined together, much like a braid, they weave in and out of each other in order to substantiate her theories. The Abject influences the Proper Body are both are informed by the semiotic.
One cannot talk about Kristeva and her concepts without first being informed about and understanding the Abject. The Abject is a mortal peril writhing under our skin and in our guts at all times. It sits just beneath the surface, waiting to throw our bodies into an uncertain state, putting our body and mind at opposition. It is an ascertained horror, the Abject is a place where boundaries begin to breakdown, where there is gesture and nuance. Where we are confronted with an archaic space before language constrictions such as Subject and object. It is an intangible and truly undefinable state. The Abject encompasses what is cast out, marginalised and excluded from the norm or expected1 . It is primarily referred to in regard to the body, self-identity and boundaries within 1 The norm refers to normatives and structures that are expected within society.
humanity and Self2. The Abject is a disruption of the conventional structures of Subject and object, of what is considered human and other. “When I am beset by abjection, the twisted braid of affects I call by such a name does not have, properly speaking, a definable object.” (Kristeva, 1980, p.1). The Abject is not one definable thing, it is a transposition, a temporality within an aspect of permanence. It’s a primal expression deeper than repression, as Kristeva states that the Abject is closely linked to the unconscious but in her framework, she sets the Abject up to be understood as a notion that exists beyond the unconscious and repression which complicates traditional psychoanalytic ideas of psyche. 3Repression to her implies that there are stable boundaries between Subject and object, more align with the Freudian understanding of repression and the unconscious. There is inside and outside, but Kristeva’s suggesting that there is something that destroys those boundaries The Freudian framework for repression is defined as a conscious eTort to push away or deflect distressing memories, thoughts or desire and the unconscious psyche absorbs them (Freud, 1915).
The Abject is not simply repressed, it is a violent expelling and thrusting away from the Self that is most carnal and horrifying. The Abject is something that must be violently rebutted by the Subject. Kristeva says in Powers “What is Abject, on the contrary, the jettisoned object, is radically excluded and draws me toward the place where meaning collapses.” (Kristeva, 1980, p. 2) She is saying here that Abject, and abjection lies out with the superego4 , in this sense abjection is not hidden or repressed or absorbed by the subconscious or unconscious but is rather a domineering threat to the stability of the
2 The capitalized Self refers to the conscious or subject of a person. The Ego.
3 Freud and Kristeva are incredibly intertwined, I am aware of this wider context, it will not be addressed in this essay.
4 Psychologocal term that refers to ethical component of the psyche and provides moral standards.
Self and is therefore expunged. “It lies beyond the set, and does not seem to agree to the latter’s rules of the game” (Kristeva, 1980, p.2). The theory of abjection exists in contention with the Freudian idea of the repressed and unconscious as they are both concerned with the breaking down of boundaries that exist between Self and Other. Yet, Kristeva’s thinking is incredibly distinct and separate from the traditional scope that is provided to us by psychoanalytical discussions around these concepts and the workings of concepts like repression. The Abject domineers the Self thusly showing us that its power and substance stems from the fact that it cannot be assimilated into the symbolic and structurally binding plane of language and order.
The Abject is akin to that pit in your stomach when you witness something utterly disturbing yet cannot pull away your gaze. It lies in the moment where you realize that the states that horrify the Self, that are bigger than the Self ’s experiences and expectations are an integral part of humanities make up; and it somehow satiates you. It is not unlike Georges Bataille theories on eroticism, but it is not based in the sexual or of sex. Bataille looks at boundaries in Subject, culture and social order through a diTerent lens. In his work Bataille5 explains that eroticism is an act that requires there to be an overture of sexual desire that causes the breakdown of boundaries of the rational conscious and social acceptability. (Bataille, 2012). It is not unusual to see something entirely disturbing and yet feel utterly transfixed. In this way they are at surface level alike, but Kristeva’s way of dealing with transgression diTers. The Abject is an action in response to fear and unnerve in the face of mortality. It is a thrusting away, an unravelling in comparison to Bataille’s scope.
5 A French philosopher who is only pertinent to this part of my discussion, his philosophies are a part of a wider discussion regarding Kristeva, but those will not be addressed in this essay.
Kristeva typically uses the idea of food loathing as a way to ground the concept of the Abject into more understandable terms for her reader. “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 paring- I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body...” (Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 3) Here she explains that there is a series of aTects that happen to the body, one begins to perspire, to feel the physical manifestation of the mortal peril that writhes within. It is not the food itself or the act of eating that causes this revealing, it is the notion that something might once have seemed entirely edible, delicious in fact. But the realisation or discover y that the sustenance has a ghost of decay, or that it in some way relates back to our bodies is what causes these superficial boundaries between Self and other to dissolve and for the Abject to reveal itself, it becomes harrowing. “Food becomes Abject only if it is a border between two distinct entities or territories. A boundary between nature and culture, between the human and the non-human. […] all food is liable to defile.” (Kristeva, 1980, p.75) The Abject in this context is often likened to the uncanny, but it is not. The uncanny is familiar, and unsettles; the Abject disturbs, disrupts and it is far more violent and entirely unfamiliar in the sense of Self.
This being said, we have all experienced abjection. Renowned novelist Franz Kafka in his correspondence to his lover Mileana tried himself to put words to the feeling of the Abject, “I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones” (Kafka,1952, p.219) this allows for us to see that
the Abject is not something new or individual, it is in the way that we individually experience the Abject when it besets upon us, but the notion has been there forever within the collective human psyche. Kristeva was the one to unpick and knit all of the ambivalent and escaping threads and bestow upon us the language for our makeup. The first experience of abjection in a person’s life is that of birth. The babe expunges itself from the mother’s womb, to separate entirely from her overwhelming presence and symbiotic unity. The abjection begins from the visceral tearing apart of flesh to create two biologically autonomous creatures. The birth is so violent that it instils both mother and child with this mortal anxiety. It is ambivalent and unstable. (Felluga, 2011) We at birth recognise the constructed boundaries of Self and Other, from the moment we expunge from the womb, we are now individuals and unpure.
The Proper Body and its Performativity
Now that we have a clear understanding on the concept that is the Abject, we can begin to move deeper into Powers (Kristeva, 1980) and look at the Proper Body Kristeva’s theory of the Proper Body is seen to be almost untraceable in its origins to the earth, it is individual and idyllic Kristeva states that we collectively have been performing our whole lives in order to maintain this distinction between Self and nature to achieve ‘proper’ and to move away from abjection. More specifically, nature’s incomparability, instability and it’s mess. A Proper Body is not given to us by nature, it is performed and unstable and incomplete. “The body must bear no trace of its debt to nature: it must be clean and proper in order to be fully symbolic.” (Kristeva, 1980, p.102) The formation of a Proper Body concerns the mapping of what is proper and incorporeal, from what defiles and is thrust away. The performative aspect of this concept comes into play when we discuss the upkeep of this Proper Body ideal. We maintain our surroundings, ourselves to keep from unravelling and catching a glimpse of the ghost that is decay and not Self.
The Proper Body is a concept that is widely explored in art, I myself did a performance piece (Goodall, 2024a) in my third year at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design whilst undertaking a feminist philosophies module that was anchored heavily by the concept of the Proper Body. In my creative exploration, I was incredibly drawn to the chronic nature in which we attempt to maintain the appearance of a Proper Body through the act of performance. Kristeva in Powers (Kristeva, 1980) discusses the vice like clutch that we take up in our lives in order to control this idea that we may unravel and the chronic maintenance we undergo to achieve the idyllic Proper Body would come undone and we would be exposed for what we truly are, semiotic and creatures
that are beset by abjection. I was so drawn to the idea of exploring Kristeva’s concept as a performative piece as Kristeva proclaims that we have been performing our entire lives in order to understand and maintain the rigidity in which the Proper Body concerns itself, in how it distinct from itself and nature. During the performance, my skin had been marked with henna, and the actions that followed are ones that depict chronic maintenance. I wash the henna from my skin with rags and water; neither I nor the water is ever truly clean once they are concerned with each other; once the boundaries of Self and other are broken, we can never rid ourselves of the debt we owe to nature. The piece was working with the narrative of our inability to fully be secure and stable enough that we could align with the symbolic. It is an impossible feat, and yet we feel the niggling need to undergo the agonising constancy of trying to eradicate the semiotic which lives inside of the Self. We overtake the role of Mother “We clean, we keep order, we present, and we perform. We treat our homes as if they are our bodies, so that no stranger may look upon us and see that we are unpure and come from these means.”
(Goodall, 2024b) There will also be a mark, a stain that cannot be reached or eradicated, a loose thread that can be tightly bound, there will always be something that makes the Proper Body elusive and unattainable. Our debt to nature will never be untraceable.
Schneemann’s Framework
To further reflect on Kristeva's account of the Proper Body and abjection, I will now turn to the work of performance artist Carolee Schneemann, especially her work Interior
Scroll (Schneemann, 1975), which stands as one of the most iconic and provocative works of feminist performance art. This piece allows for the artist’s body to become the intersection of subject and object, a temporal paradox where she is trapped in transformation, and a plane in which we are encouraged to delve into the visual abject.
On the one hand, I want to use Kristeva's work as a lens for understanding the power of Schneemann’s work in terms of challenging dominant concepts and themes within philosophy and performance art. Particularly in relation to the subversion of the feminine archetype, the boundaries of art and the body in the accompaniment of the power dynamics that feed from a patriarchal polite society that thusly embed into our daily practices. I also want to reflect on the importance of performance as a method of engaging with Kristeva's philosophy because Kristeva’s concept of the Abject is rooted in the body’s potential to disrupt boundary and order. For Kristeva, the Abject is what challenges and breaks down the tidy categorisations and containers where Self and
Other reside. Performance, by its very nature, typically invokes the use of the body to evoke themes and wider concepts. The inclusion of raw physicality and gesture in this analysis visually portrays the basis of the Abject for Kristeva.
Therefore, the next thread I will be braiding into my story is the work of Carolee Schneemann. Carolee Schneemann’s performance work in the 60’s through to the late 80’s was widely unaccepted as part of traditional practice, and it wasn’t accepted or appreciated until the late 80s to the 90’s. Her performances were seen as transgressive and demoralizing by the art critics and public of the 70’s because she was allowing herself to use and have her body be seen so explicitly. Yet is this not what happens when you govern women’s autonomy ? When the societal heads choose to ignore their pleas to be heard, how can women not instead use their bodies? The very vessels that we are crucified and scrutinized for. If you won’t listen, we will show.
Schneemann’s background as a painter, I believe, is an aiding factor in her performative work. The paintings from her archive are incredibly theatrical, full to the brim with gesture, colour and energy, as though something is bubbling below the surface. She fills the frame. She approaches her performances in a similar fashion. With the ‘room’ as her frame, she fills it. Her physical gestures are almost overbearing at points, but they are controlled and concise; it is also worth noting that Schneemann did not always perform independently. She knew when the composition needed more figures, more bodies. She approaches the ‘frame’ as though it is her second body, an extension of herself and her dialogue. She feels the guttural need to fill space, to push the boundaries.
Upon my delve into Schneemann’s artistic archive, I came across a book entitled ‘up to and including her limits’ (Cameron, 1997). This book is a collection of Schneemann’s performative accounts accompanied by writing on the pieces and around Schneemann’s artistic career. An excerpt from the writing that had struck me upon reading goes as follows; “It does not seem suTicient to address the range of issues that
arise when the artist is a woman, and her search for artistic meaning leads her to employ her own body as both meaning and vehicle for her art and the locus of its expression.” (Cameron, 1997) This was a provocation made by Dan Cameron, a contemporary art curator, in a book he wrote which was a curational selection of Schneemann’s performative work. To deem the notion as insuTicient or even inappropriate to discuss why women choose to use their bodies as vehicles in their work, especially in the 60’s – 90’s, a period where women artists where still widely unrecognized or uncredited is incredibly tone deaf of a man. Of course, we then choose to turn to our bodies, it is after all what the world is obsessed with. The structural governing that Kristeva talks of in Powers (Kristeva, 1980) is something that is explored inadvertently in Schneemann’s ‘Meat Joy’ (Schneemann, 1964), the fact that these societal heads are pressuring women of the domestic, and more widely the feminine creates a narrative of bodies on top of bodies. Bodies that breathe down our necks to assure that we are in compliance with the ideal and that we do not risk unravelling in a way that unearths our guttural, animalistic instincts. Performance is an oTering; it is a direct exchange of energy between watcher and performer. It is not something that you can learn or expect, it is a suspension of expectation. A performance holds you in a state of temporality with permanent consequences, it is unstable and circumstantial. A performance is akin to a container, it holds meaning and a narrative, something to give and be kept. Dan Cameron’s criticism of Schneemann’s use of her exposed body as locus of her artistic and rhetorical exploration was that she was doing so inadequately. Cameron, in this statement, is saying that Schneemann’s radical use of her body in the work does not achieve her intention of subverting the traditional scope and practices used in art in the 70’s and instead is still operating under the framework of the
patriarchal gaze and thusly objectifying herself However, Schneemann, as the pioneering figurehead in radical feminist art and Abject art, exercising her autonomy and using her own naked body as equipment and material, was an act which directly challenged the conventions of the patriarchal academy and its aTluence of gender sexuality, power and boundary. Her nude body is not concreting the upheld patriarchal conventions or a passive object; it is active and participating. It is breathing.
Schneemann’s body is a means of deconstructing and pushing her limits and the taboos associated with the female figure in art and in practice.
Abject Art and Assimilating
Abject Art, according to the Tate Museum, is as follows “Abject art is used to describe artworks which explore themes that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety particularly referencing the body and bodily functions” (Tate, 2017) Abject Art is a genre of contemporary visual art that heavily concerns itself with the work of feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva. The works tend to lend themselves to visually exploring bodily fluids, decay, mortality and what is seen to be grotesque and oTputting. The works move to induce feelings of disgust and repulsion; the artists aim for the viewer to want to rip themselves away from the piece but find that they cannot. The works nurture an environment where polite society experiences what we know as the Abject. The works are typically visceral and corporeal, some namely examples of works and artists that are associated and fall under the title of Abject Art would include 6:
6 These artworks are incredibly depthful in meaning and concept. However, Interior Scroll (Schneemann,1975) is the main artistic focus of this dissertation, and this section will reflect that.
Figure 1: Untitled, Kiki Smith 1990
Figure 2: Untitled #190, Cindy Sherman. 1989
3: Chicken Knickers, Sarah Lucas.
Figure 4: I too had thousands of 1997 blinking cilia, while my belly, new and made for the ground was being reborn, Ivana Bašić. 2019
Figure 5: Interior Scroll, Carolee Schneemann. 1975
Abject art is closely associated with feminist contexts and ideology, in that feminine excrements are taboo and unclean; they are rejected or ‘abjected’ from patriarchal
Figure
polite society. The genre engages with the notion of seeping forms; they try to capture the paradoxical state of transition of neither nor, concepts that are held close in feminist discussions around the feminine ideal and form, it confronts with forms that seep and should be cast oT. Interior Scroll (Schneemann,1975) is a piece that is closely entwined with Abject and feminist artwork. This piece is often what we look to when the subject of Schneemann’s performance work arises and it is often the center of discourse when we talk about artwork that confronts the gendered discussion of art. Yet, the performance is something more than that, it is something else entirely. The notion and visual of writing being extracted from not just the body but the vaginal cavity is incredibly visceral and a very impactful visual. It rouses many questions for the viewer, the body being used as a vessel in which carries demands and scripture. It directs the focus from the power of the body to the power of the word. Interior Scroll (Schneemann, 1975) directly confronts the perception that Schneemann is faced with by her peers and critics, the notion that she is ridiculous to the academy.
Schneemann’s performance is a direct engagement with the Abject. The Physical act of prying a deeply feminist manifesto from a place which is not only physically raw, but
Figure 6: Interior Scroll, Carolee Schneemann. 1975
contextually raw as well. The vaginal cavity is the between space of holding, that inbetween liminal space that allows for transformation and the moving between and through of boundary constrictions. The vaginal cavity is the first site of abjection for most, as abjection begins at birth; this just adds yet another layer to the already rich performance. The text on the scroll itself is dense and poetic, discussing the duality in the role of a woman’s body as creator and as an object of desire. “I am the woman who is the artist. I am the woman who is the muse” (Schneemann, 1975) The performance is not simply a personal project for self, but one that aids to the understanding of how it is to be a woman. Schneemann is abjecting the semiotic; she is casting away her own rhetoric that is poetic and nuanced, her unravelling. Interior Scroll (Schneemann, 1975) is not only a visual exploration of the Abject, but we are seeing the maintenance of a Proper Body. The piece makes the space for a discussion around bodily autonomy and the unravelling that occurs when trying to maintain the upkeep of societal normality, Schneemann’s body is being used as the site of something both private and public; it is used in the way of exploring societal and patriarchal gaze and confronting our complacency.
In Interior Scroll (Schneemann, 1975), Schneemann consciously transitions from Subject to object. The performance confronts the audience, the art world and, more broadly, women with the narrative or statute that we are a conscious, we are leaky, and we are not bound. She creates a saturated female form that is literally filled with knowledge and rhetoric, that is active and is capable of producing a material trace from within our spaces of holding in the liminality that the Proper Body creates. What Schneemann does with this cerebral act of pulling out a physical scroll is equating knowledge and language to the female body, the symbolic and the semiotic, a body that
is historically scrutinised and cultivated in means to be looked at, to be maintained, not to be understood, not allowed to unravel. A body that has been assigned to allegory and object and musing. Interior Scroll allows the audience to draw from these liminalities that she is exploring between Proper and being.
Kristeva’s complex concept of the Abject informs Schneemann’s work; the Abject, as we know, is concerned with the disruption of boundaries; it disrupts the symbolic order of the Self. The disruption of identity and social order are themes that are deeply entwined in Schneemann’s artistic and performative catalogue, by placing the two into a dialogue, we can explore how this performance enacts Julia Kristeva’s notion of horror in regards to the feminine archetype, and why with the added context of Kristeva, Schneemann’s performance is that much more provocative in her use of her body as a vehicle, her use of gesture and materiality amplifies the Abject that much more.
The Abject disrupts the boundary between Self and other, clean and unclean, human and animality; it bestows upon the aTected liminality. It thrusts the aTected into that space of unknowing, of peril. It is, however, because of its disruption, its threats to societal structure and the neat categorization that we attempt to assimilate within our existence that we structure our lives through the use of language. The Abject exists and cohabitates in the entities and the materials which contaminate the archetypal ideal of what is proper; it undermines and violates the Proper Body ’s symbolic boundaries. The entities we speak of consist of mainly bodily fluids: excrement, menstrual blood, anything by which seeps from the vessel, something by which presents a ghost of decay and reminds the consciousness of mortality of what once was, by which we are made.
Interior Scroll (Schneemann, 1975) is a performative piece that is directly concerned
with and inserts itself in the Abject framework. In ‘Interior Scroll’, Schneemann is undressed; she stands not bare but marked, and from her vaginal cavity, she extracts an artefact. Reading from it, she is asserting the expression and expectation of her physical and intellectual Self. This innate and intimate act of revealing the scroll from within her body implicates the audience; Schneemann is imploring the audience and viewer to confront this internal liminality – a seemingly temporal interior space of holding that is typically private and unseen, unaddressed. “Maternal authority is the trustee of that mapping of the self’s clean and proper body; it is distinguished from paternal laws within which, with the phallic phase and acquisition of language, the destiny of man will take shape.” (Kristeva, 1980. P.72) In publicly removing the material, the language from her vaginal holding, Schneemann does something magnificent; she challenges the Abject directly. She engages and inserts herself in the notion that the Abject is not the only one to be breaking and pushing against the boundaries of Self; she assimilates and equates herself with the Abject.
Powers of Horror is a Performance OIering
Inspired by the delve into Schneemann and entwining the threads of her performance and how they interact with Kristeva’s philosophy in Powers of Horror (Kristeva, 1980), we can move into how the element of performance informs Kristeva. I want to revisit Kristeva with a new scope and braid the threads together into a new thing entirely. Powers of Horror (Kristeva 1980) does not match the writings of her peers, not just in concept but in her way of writing and imploring. The essay is so poetic, abrupt at times and full of transformation of language and ideas. Kristeva sets herself aside from the traditional philosophical trajectory; what she graciously provides her reader with is a performance oTering, a semiotic body.
According to Marina Abramovic7 (Abramavic, 2002), a performance is an oTering; it is a direct transmission of energy between the audience and the performer. It is not something that you can learn or that you can expect; it is a suspension of expectation, a space of holding. A performance holds you; it is a temporal state that is accompanied by permanent consequential experiences. It is a rhythm or an open- ended list; anything can happen because circumstances are always changing, but there are limits, physical limits in which the mind and the body are not the same. There is also the idea that a performance is akin to a container. For example, Interior Scroll (Schneemann, 1975) is a container; it is a space of holding, and it suspends expectations. Within the temporal space, Schneemann embodies abjection. She turns to breaking down the boundaries
7 I am aware of the relevance that the abject has in Marina Abramovic’s work, this will be the only reference towards her in this essay.
between object and Subject; she turns herself into the subject within the confinement; her semiotic nature leeks from her vessel, and so she transforms within the space. Kristeva’s Powers of Horror (Kristeva, 1980) mirrors this set up. The essay is the container; it upholds the symbolic structure of being bound by language constrictions in the form of a literate essay. However, Kristeva’s writing and concepts are nuanced; it seeps into the structure and begins to break it down The matter of being discussed becomes the discussion itself; it seeps into every line, every space and leaks onto the audience’s consciousness.
While rooted and conversing with psychoanalysis, philosophy and linguistics, Kristeva's work has a performative way to it. Her concepts alone are performative in nature; the Abject is a very active and poetic horror that overtakes the subject; it forces transformation to occur for the in-between to emerge. Her writings concern motion, subjectivity and the chronic nature in which we are unravelling and laying bare the Other that lies writhing beneath our skin. So, if we are to take Kristeva’s writing not just as a stoic complex body of literature but rather as a performance, it allows for new depth in the concepts, for she is practicing what she is preaching. Kristeva’s essay is an embodiment of her own concept: the act of creation as a performative process. One of the points of Kristeva's Abject is that it is not just an intellectual theory that only some may experience or that is to be debated about in intellectual and academic settings; it is a moment of experience. A subject is always becoming, always in flux; it is never stoic. We are thrust into and immersed in the chronic need that Kristeva discusses in relation to the Proper Bodies maintenance is paralleled in her chronic need to unravel what it is the abject is, the guttural need to define the undefinable so that she may be rid of the niggling and habitual leaking, the words seep out of her onto the page and gesture leaks
from them. The rhythm of her writing does not follow the typical rhythm you expect from a philosophical essay, one that is set in formality and rigid in concepts such as Kant or Heidegger8 , which are impenetrable in a diTerent way. “The abject confronts us, on the other hand, and this time within our personal archeology, with our earliest attempts to release the hold of the maternal entity even before ex-isting outside of her, thanks to the autonomy of language. It is a violent, clumsy breaking away, with the constant risk of falling back under the sway of a power as secure as it is stifling.” (Kristeva, 1980. P.13)
The writing is rhythmic, it is written with poetic language and visual imagery, it ebbs and can be abrupt, and disruptive at some impasses. Her writing structure echoes the stages of the Abject. Engaging with Kristeva’s text in a fragmented and disturbed manner aids to this disruptive underbelly and pushes the audience to sit within the liminalities, to dissect and stoop in the unsaid, in the undiscernible.
I find it fascinating and worthy of note that Kristeva in Powers (Kristeva, 1980) does not directly address performing and performativity in the traditional sense of other philosophers such as Judith Butler and Micheal Foucault 9. I feel as though this was very deliberate on Kristeva’s part, as even though we, as the audience, can see how Kristeva herself is performing in the form of her essay, she cannot address it directly or utter the words. She would be breaking the suspension of expectation. When one is passing knowledge and Otherness between Subjects, the engager of the exchange mustn’t overtly announce what is at play, as doing so would disturb the subtle dynamics that are controlling the space of holding.
8 Philosophers who will not be further discussed in this text.
9 Philosophers who will not be further addressed in this text.
Conclusion
In the interest of tying up the weaved threads of Julia Kristeva’s concepts on the Proper Body, semiotic and the Abject and Carolee Schneemann’s transformative and iconic performance, I can confidently say that putting them in both at the intersection of art and philosophy made for a gratifying discovery. Placing the works in tandem with one another provides for a new scope and enriches both works. Looking at Interior Scroll (Schneemann, 1975) while applying a second layer of context, Kristeva’s theoretical concepts provoke the viewer of her work to confront new fields of discussion in relation to the piece: transformation, the writhing peril that lives just below the surface and understanding the neither nor. Powers of Horror (Kristeva, 1980) provides us with the language for concepts, themes and feelings that have clearly been touched on or talked around but never verbalised in such an in- depth way before Kristeva’s essay. On the flip of that, looking at Power’s with the added analysis of Schneemann’s performance opened a new susceptibility for scope and discussion and allowed for discovery. That Powers of Horror is an oTering of performance provided so generously to us by Kristeva. Seeing and allowing for the acknowledgement that there are such strong performative aspects to Powers of Horror just solidifies Kristeva’s discussion and concepts that much more, it gives them even more power.
List of Figures
1) Smith, K. [1992] Untitled [Sculpture] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/smith-untitled-t16078
2) Sherman, C. [1989] Untitled #190 [Chromogenic color prints] The Broad Foundation. Avalable at: https://www.thebroad.org/art/cindy-sherman/untitled190
3) Lucas, S. [1997] Chicken Knickers [Colour photograph on paper] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lucas- chicken-knickers-p78210
4) Bašić, I. [2019] I too had thousands of blinking cilia, while my belly, new and made for the ground was being reborn [Sculpture] Galerie PACT. Available at: https://flash art.com/article/ivana-basic-by-steTanie-hessler/
5) Schneeman, C. [1975] Interior Scroll [ Beet juice, urine and coTee on screenprint paper] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/caroleeschneemann-5446
6) Schneeman, C. [1975] Interior Scroll [Suite of 13 gelatin silver prints] Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art. Available at: https://fineartmultiple.com/blog/KatjaTaylor-Schneemann/
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