ABSTRACT
The formal definition of abject and abjection refers to the state of being cast out, rejected, degraded, abandoned, humiliated, and has been used in English since the mid-seventeenth century. It has gained a particular meaning in cultural criticism and sexual theory largely since the publication of the French theorist Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Kristeva 1982; first French publication 1980), though it has a longer pre-history in French literature.
