ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to contribute to theories of purity and impurity by positing the possibility of a conception in which impurity is not inherently viewed as something ‘out of place’ or as something that ought to be avoided or eliminated. I argue for this conception by fi rst engaging Julia Kristeva’s infl uential account of abjection in her Powers of Horror (1982). As we shall see, Kristeva defi nes abjection in a manner broadly similar to many modern and contemporary accounts of impurity: the abject (or impure) is something that disturbs the social-cultural order and gives rise to the judgment that it ought properly not to be there (see Duschinsky, 2013). Affectively, it is often accompanied by feelings of disgust or loathing. Thus, it generates a response in those who encounter it to physically and emotionally distance themselves from it and/or to actively suppress it and to remove it from the social sphere. We can designate this approach an “eliminationist” characterization of impurity. Kristeva designates the Hebrew Bible as a key historical-cultural source of abjection in Western society. She emphasizes that the biblical designation of female physical functions as linked to “impurity” contributes to casting female bodies and female sexuality as loathsome and disgusting, and as a shameful and “not proper” part of human life and culture, thereby helping to reinforce patriarchal oppression of women.
