ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up Julia Kristeva's and Theodor W. Adorno's analyses of the subject through their respective notions of the abject and the ugly. It highlights some of the similarities between the concepts without collapsing the two very different projects from which they arise. Notably, Kristeva focuses on healing the rifts within the subject through an intimate revolt that might one day link up with a new form of politics. In contrast, Adorno insists on the individual's capacity for resistance through a form of self-reflection that would entail a re-sensitization to horror and suffering. Despite their differences, Kristeva and Adorno both belong to the European tradition, sharing similar intellectual predecessors, from Hegel to Freud, and are primarily concerned with the formation of a Western subject. The chapter also explores the productive potential of the abject and the ugly for postcolonial and decolonial critiques of psychoanalysis and critical theory.
