“Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek: Summary and Critique

Introduction: “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek

“Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek first appeared in the journal Critical Inquiry 43 in the autumn of 2016. This essay delves into the aesthetics of ugliness, drawing upon the foundational work of Karl Rosenkranz, who conceptualized ugliness as a necessary counterpart to beauty. It explores how ugliness serves as an aesthetic category in its own right and examines its complex roles as the foil, predecessor, or even essence of beauty in various philosophical traditions. The discussion extends to modern interpretations of abjection, disgust, and the monstrous, integrating insights from Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory. Žižek and Krečič highlight the destabilizing power of ugliness and its potential to subvert or reinforce cultural and symbolic orders. This essay is significant in literary theory as it reframes ugliness and abjection not merely as aesthetic outliers but as central to understanding beauty, sublimity, and cultural constructs of the grotesque. By doing so, it enriches discussions on the interplay of art, subjectivity, and the cultural dialectics of inclusion and exclusion.

Summary of “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek

Term/Concept	Definition/Description	Key Source/Reference
Abjection	The unsettling phenomenon of objects or occurrences that disrupt the boundaries of self.	Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror; the disintegration of distinctions between subject and object.
The Ugly	Aesthetic category signifying negativity as a foil or precondition for beauty.	Karl Rosenkranz, Ästhetik des Häßlichen; Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory.
The Creepy	Modern iteration of the uncanny; impenetrable and unsettling aspects of the neighbor.	Adam Kotsko, Creepiness; Freud’s theory of the uncanny.
Disgust	Emotional and somatic reaction to violations of corporeal boundaries.	Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle; linked to jouissance and corporeal destabilization.
Jouissance	Painful enjoyment beyond pleasure, often linked to disgust and the abject.	Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory; further explored in Kristeva’s abjection.
Fetishistic Disavowal	The act of knowing the truth but behaving as if unaware, preserving belief or denial.	Octave Mannoni; Kristeva on language as fetish.
Hora (Semiotic)	Pre-symbolic materiality that underpins cultural formations, associated with rhythm.	Julia Kristeva, contrasting with symbolic order; related to the maternal.
Symbolic Order	Structure of meaning established through differentiation and abjection.	Lacanian psychoanalysis; Žižek emphasizes abjection as its foundational process.
Comical and Sublime	The ambiguous role of ugliness in oscillating between the ridiculous and overwhelming.	Rosenkranz’s triadic relationship of beautiful, ugly, and comical; Žižek’s analysis.
Monstrous	A form of ugliness that exceeds acceptable limits, evoking unpleasure without sublimation.	Kantian aesthetics on the sublime; Herman Parret’s analysis of the monstrous.
Real and Reality	The traumatic “real” that resists symbolic representation, destabilizing meaning.	Lacan’s theory of the real; Žižek’s extension to abjection and trauma.
Object Cause of Desire	The enigmatic drive behind desires, often obscured in creepiness and perversion.	Lacanian psychoanalysis; distinction between object of desire and object cause.
Transgression and Law	The paradoxical interdependence of societal norms and their transgression.	Freud and Lacan’s views on perversion; Žižek’s critique of hysteria and power.
Catharsis	The process of confronting and purifying the abject through religion or art.	Kristeva’s analysis of art and religion as mediators of abjection.
Extimacy	The intimate externality of the abject within the subject, creating an uncanny experience.	Lacanian neologism, applied to Kristeva’s abjection by Žižek.
Political Phobia	The use of abject figures (e.g., “the Jew”) to avoid addressing societal antagonisms.	Žižek on the interplay of fascism, class struggle, and symbolic scapegoating.

Contribution of “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek to Literary Theory/Theories

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Psychoanalytic Literary Theory

• Exploration of Abjection: The text deepens Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, linking it to Freud’s and Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories. It illustrates how abjection operates within cultural narratives and artistic expression, disturbing symbolic order (Kristeva, Powers of Horror).
• Jouissance and Disgust: Highlights the paradoxical nature of jouissance—pleasure through unpleasure—and its embodiment in literary representations of disgust and corporeal transgressions (Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle; Žižek).
• Uncanny and Creepy: Updates Freud’s notion of the uncanny through Adam Kotsko’s concept of “creepiness,” applying it to modern narratives about the enigmatic Other (Creepiness by Kotsko; Freud’s Das Unheimliche).

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Aesthetic Theory

• Reevaluation of the Ugly: Expands on Karl Rosenkranz’s Ästhetik des Häßlichen by arguing for the ugly as both a foil for beauty and a productive force in art, enabling critique of societal norms (Rosenkranz, Adorno).
• Monstrous and Sublime: Positions ugliness and monstrosity as key aesthetic categories, bridging Kantian sublime and Hegelian dialectics to question the limits of representation (Kant, Parret).
• Art and Catharsis: Reinforces Kristeva’s assertion that art serves as a mode of traversing abjection, using literary works to mediate between the symbolic and the Real.

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Postmodern Theory

• Critique of Symbolic Order: Explores the fragility of symbolic systems through the abject, showing how meaning collapses in postmodern narratives, disrupting identity and structure (Kristeva’s Powers of Horror; Žižek).
• Political Phobia in Narratives: Examines the fetishistic denial of societal antagonisms in postmodern works, where abject figures like “the Jew” or “the refugee” mask class struggles (Žižek’s Welcome to the Desert of the Real).
• Interplay of Real and Reality: Discusses the breakdown of the symbolic, evident in postmodern realism’s ability to make the ordinary uncanny (e.g., Dickens’s “eerie realism”).

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Marxist Literary Criticism

• Class Antagonism and Abjection: Identifies the abject as a means of avoiding the recognition of class struggle, using scapegoating in literature to suppress deeper social contradictions (Žižek’s critique of anti-Semitism and political populism).
• Role of Power and Perversion: Shows how power structures depend on the “perverse” transgression of their norms, reflecting societal dynamics within literary texts (Lacan’s Four Discourses, Žižek).

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Feminist Literary Theory

• Maternal and Abjection: Engages with Kristeva’s semiotic (maternal rhythms) to critique the exclusion of feminine and maternal forces in patriarchal narratives. The abject becomes a site of tension between symbolic order and maternal pre-symbolic forces (Kristeva).
• Hysteria and Borderline Subjects: Recontextualizes female hysteria in contemporary narratives, arguing that the borderline personality in literature reflects modern societal pressures (Kotsko).

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Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

• Binary Collapse: Challenges binary oppositions like beautiful/ugly, self/Other, and inside/outside through the concept of the abject, emphasizing the fluidity and instability of meaning (Lacanian theory, Derridean deconstruction).
• Language as Fetish: Analyzes the fetishistic function of language itself, bridging symbolic signs with the unspeakable real, a tension often central in literary texts (Kristeva, Mannoni, Lacan).

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Existentialism and Absurdism

• The Real and Bare Life: Connects abjection to the existential dread of bare life and mortality, drawing parallels with Kafkaesque and absurdist representations of human alienation (Žižek’s discussion of Kafka; Freud on death drive).
• Subjectivity and the Abject: Frames abjection as central to the constitution of subjectivity, revealing the absurdity of maintaining distinctions in a world of blurred boundaries.

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Contributions to Specific Literary Works/Theorists

• Céline’s Literature: Positions Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s works as confrontations with the abject, offering insights into fascist aesthetics and the limitations of returning to “primal drives” (Journey to the End of the Night).
• Dickens’s Realism: Highlights Dickens’s “eerie realism” as an example of how ordinary reality can be rendered spectral and uncanny, contributing to the aesthetic discourse on realism and fantasy.

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Examples of Critiques Through “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek

Literary Work	Themes Analyzed	Connection to “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting”	Critical Insight
Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis	Alienation, grotesque, family dynamics	Abjection of Gregor’s transformation blurs boundaries between human and nonhuman, evoking disgust and familial rejection.	Highlights how Gregor’s body represents the abject, disrupting familial and societal norms, aligning with Žižek’s view on the abject as destabilizing identity and corporeal boundaries.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein	Monstrosity, the sublime, the grotesque	The creature embodies the ugly and monstrous as a foil to human beauty and morality, but also elicits sympathy, complicating binary oppositions.	Connects to the essay’s discussion of the monstrous as a paradoxical aesthetic—repellent yet captivating. Explores how Shelley critiques Enlightenment ideals through the creature’s abjection.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night	Nihilism, disgust with modernity, existential crisis	Céline’s narrative plunges into the abject, exposing the grotesque aspects of war, colonization, and urban despair as reflections of societal breakdown.	Shows how Céline uses abjection to critique modernity, aligning with the essay’s view that confronting the abject reveals societal hypocrisies and existential discontent.
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart	The uncanny, psychological instability, guilt	The narrator’s obsession with the old man’s eye exemplifies the creepy, tied to Freud’s uncanny and Lacan’s objet petit a, driving the narrative’s psychological horror.	Integrates Kotsko’s idea of creepiness as the disturbing impenetrability of another’s desire. The essay’s insights link the narrator’s fixation on the eye to abject horror destabilizing subjectivity.

Criticism Against “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek

Representative Quotations from “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
“The pure image of the beautiful arises all the more shining against the dark background/foil of the ugly.”	Highlights the dialectical relationship between beauty and ugliness, emphasizing that the beautiful is often defined and intensified in contrast to the ugly, an idea rooted in Hegelian aesthetics.
“If there is any causal connection at all between the beautiful and the ugly, it is from the ugly as cause to the beautiful as effect, and not the other way around.”	Adorno’s critique that beauty arises from ugliness challenges traditional Hegelian hierarchy, suggesting that the ugly precedes beauty as its foundational ground.
“Disgust arises when the border that separates the inside of our body from its outside is violated.”	Articulates the phenomenology of disgust through the collapse of boundaries, drawing on Kristeva’s notion of the abject as the breakdown of clear subject-object or inside-outside distinctions.
“The sublime can appear (turn into) the ridiculous, and the ridiculous can appear (turn into) the sublime.”	Explores the fluidity between aesthetic categories, showing how extremes of the sublime and ridiculous often converge or transform, challenging rigid classifications.
“What distinguishes man from animals is that, with humans, the disposal of shit becomes a problem.”	Analyzes human shame and disgust as a function of self-awareness and symbolic separation, contrasting the human tendency to ascribe meaning to bodily processes with animals’ instinctual behavior.
“The ugly is the force of life against the death imposed by the aesthetic form.”	Adorno’s view that ugliness embodies raw, chaotic life in opposition to the mortifying effects of aestheticization reflects the paradoxical vitality of the ugly in art.
“The abject is so thoroughly internal to the subject that this very overintimacy makes it external.”	Refers to Kristeva’s notion of the abject as extimacy, where what is most intimate to the subject becomes alien and external, disrupting identity and order.
“Creepy is today’s name for the Freudian uncanny, for the uncanny core of a neighbor.”	Redefines creepiness in contemporary terms as the impenetrability of others’ desires, linking it to Freud’s uncanny and the social anxieties around proximity and ambiguity.
“The ultimate object of disgust is bare life itself, life deprived of the protective barrier.”	Suggests that disgust reveals existential truths about life’s biological reality, exposing the vulnerability and “sleaziness” of organic existence when stripped of symbolic protections.
“In a historical situation in which the beautiful is irreparably discredited as kitsch, it is only by presenting the ugly in its ugliness that art can keep open the utopian horizon of beauty.”	Proposes that the ugly serves as a critical aesthetic tool in modernity, opposing the commodified and superficial beauty of kitsch to retain art’s subversive potential.

Suggested Readings: “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection” by Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek

1. Krečič, Jela, and Slavoj Žižek. “Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 43, no. 1, 2016, pp. 60–83. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26547671. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
2. Sands, Danielle. “Insect Ethics and Aesthetics: ‘Their Blood Does Not Stain Our Hands.’” Animal Writing: Storytelling, Selfhood and the Limits of Empathy, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 154–79. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvrs916m.11. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
3. JAY, MARTIN. “Abjection Overruled.” Salmagundi, no. 103, 1994, pp. 235–51. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40548770. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
4. Alvarado, Leticia. “Abjection.” Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, edited by the Keywords Feminist Editorial Collective et al., vol. 13, NYU Press, 2021, pp. 11–13. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2tr51hm.5. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
5. Lipschitz, Ruth. “Abjection.” The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies, edited by Lynn Turner et al., vol. 1, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp. 13–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv2f4vjzx.6. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.