Abject Design: a Psychoanalytic/Structuralist Analysis of Julia Kristeva’s “the Old Man and the Wolves”
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Abject Design
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A psychoanalytic/structuralist analysis of Julia Kristeva’s “The Old Man and the Wolves”
Julia Kristeva’s The Old Man and the Wolves details the gradual degeneration of the fundamentally corruptible community of Santa Varvara. As described by the novel’s namesake, the Old Man Septicious Clarus, in terms of singularity, morality and—both metaphorically and palpably—humanity, each individual’s marked decay is seen as the horrific transformation into a wolf with regard to both physical and psychological form. While the Old Man, he denotative of a purer set of morals, remains in adamant opposition to the wolves—which themselves represent a society built upon materialism and unscrupulous innards—all others, including even the most hopeful of his understudies, Alba, find themselves overwhelmed. Ultimately, when faced with the realized futility of his resistance and eventual loss of any uninfected audience to hear his soapbox pleas, the Old Man accepts a death indirectly caused by the wolves. The novel as a whole provides and analytic lens through which the reader may begin to understand the Kristevan concept of abjection as it applies to the perceived “evils” of the world. As defined by Kristeva in The Powers of Horror, “the abject refers to the human reaction…to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of distinction between subject and object or between self and other"(Felluga). This concept, of Kristeva’s own design, implies both the severance of object and subject, such that two insubstantial entities remain, the physical object and its purely representative signifier, as well as the loss of distinction in terms of one’s self. The abject refers not markedly to the actual “breakdown” of an entity but rather to its systematic redefinition as something more banal, specifically noted by a distinct lack of previously existent individuality
Abject Design
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A psychoanalytic/structuralist analysis of Julia Kristeva’s “The Old Man and the Wolves”
Julia Kristeva’s The Old Man and the Wolves details the gradual degeneration of the fundamentally corruptible community of Santa Varvara. As described by the novel’s namesake, the Old Man Septicious Clarus, in terms of singularity, morality and—both metaphorically and palpably—humanity, each individual’s marked decay is seen as the horrific transformation into a wolf with regard to both physical and psychological form. While the Old Man, he denotative of a purer set of morals, remains in adamant opposition to the wolves—which themselves represent a society built upon materialism and unscrupulous innards—all others, including even the most hopeful of his understudies, Alba, find themselves overwhelmed. Ultimately, when faced with the realized futility of his resistance and eventual loss of any uninfected audience to hear his soapbox pleas, the Old Man accepts a death indirectly caused by the wolves. The novel as a whole provides and analytic lens through which the reader may begin to understand the Kristevan concept of abjection as it applies to the perceived “evils” of the world. As defined by Kristeva in The Powers of Horror, “the abject refers to the human reaction…to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of distinction between subject and object or between self and other"(Felluga). This concept, of Kristeva’s own design, implies both the severance of object and subject, such that two insubstantial entities remain, the physical object and its purely representative signifier, as well as the loss of distinction in terms of one’s self. The abject refers not markedly to the actual “breakdown” of an entity but rather to its systematic redefinition as something more banal, specifically noted by a distinct lack of previously existent individuality