ABSTRACT
This chapter expands on many of the points raised in the opening chapter. Specifically, the author extends the account of abjection by addressing Butler’s theorisations. In addition to Kristeva and McClintock’s psychoanalytic framing, Thorneycroft introduces Butler’s conception of abjection as a discursive and political process. Importantly, he uses Butler’s conception to highlight how abjection can be used to rearticulate the terms of cultural intelligibility, such that abjection can be resisted, reclaimed, and/or reimagined. In order to explore such possibilities, the author then considers how terms and social practices can be reappropriated through the development/application of crip theory, arguing that abjection itself can be reappropriated, paradoxically, by embracing it or reimagining it differently. This consideration is important in exposing the spaces of possibility where the terms of cultural intelligibility can be recast.
