Kristeva vs. Lovecraft on Horror and Abjection (Part Two)

The Partially Examined Life

Concluding on Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror (1980) and focusing here on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928). Does Lovecraft's presentation of nameless terror capture (or improve upon) what Kristeva means by "abjection"?

For the full Cthulhu experience, listen to the Phi Fic discussion of the story. If you're really hardcore, we recommend you listen to the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast episodes 42, 43, and 44. Before either of these, you should read the story online, or listen to it, or better yet, purchase The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, which is awesome. Also relevant is this shorter story by Lovecraft, "The Unnameable." Keep a lookout for Phi Fic's next episode, featuring Mark, on Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness!

More good background info: Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," Freud on the Uncanny per Wikipedia, and Eugene Thacker's Tentacles Longer Than Night: Horror of Philosophy (Vol 3). Lovecraft also wrote an essay 1921 called "Nietzscheism and Realism."

In finishing up Kristeva, we read from the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on psychoanalytic feminism.

End song: "The Other" by Mark Lint feat. Lucy Lawless.

#philosophy #horror #abjection #psychoanalysis #neurosis #subjectivity #individuation #freud #lacan #lovecraft

Go to the blog: https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2018/11/26/ep203-2-kristeva-lovecraft/