ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the work of structural anthropologist Douglas (1966) and cultural theorist and psychoanalyst Kristeva (1982) in relation to taboo. Both academics widen parameters of discussion about the origins and positioning of taboo. I also present material from anthropologists Leach (1964) and Radcliffe-Brown (1952) to stress that, whereas language gives names to distinguish and separate things, taboo inhibits the recognition of those parts of the continuum that separates things. Under taboo, they become non-things—‘not-me’—as anomalies that fall out of classification and fill the interstices as dirt and waste products. Taking her research from Leviticus in the OT, Douglas argues that in religious practices, ritual blessing is believed to be the source of all good and the withdrawal of blessing as the source of all danger. Holiness is thus defined by strict categories of classification, cleanliness, and order. Diet is classified into clean and unclean foods and for separating animals in edible/clean and inedible/unclean. However, I argue that dirt is necessary because purity is the enemy of change and deadens creativity. I examine Douglas' ideas in relation to Julia Kristeva's work on abjection. Kristeva maintains that contrary to what enters the mouth as forms of nourishment, what is expelled from the body, out of its pores and orifices, gives rise to abjection. Kristeva suggests that how faeces and sexuality are ritualised allows the ‘two universes of filth and prohibition to brush lightly against each-other without necessarily being identified as object and law.’ On account of this flexibility, Kristeva argues that the rites of defilement as the anomalous ‘speaking being’ stands at both edges of the unnameable as the non-object and the off-limits. To conclude, I compare the cultural aetiologies of Douglas and Kristeva and speculate how these have informed their respective research into religious and secular taboos, margins, orifices, dirt, abjection, and their origin.
