ABSTRACT
Disgust is an emotion of self-protection that reinforces experiences of boundary around the self. It responds to physical stimuli, but also to the interpersonal and political. Disgust frequently attends what defies easy categorization and occupies an in-between or “intercategorical” status; this same terrain may invoke taboo. Classification as alien also can evoke disgust – and trouble our concept of humanity – as can various forms of excess, or what William Miller (1997) calls “life soup.” Disgust is more likely when life, or something lifelike, is uncontained, full of intention, and human in scale. Disgust is often called a moral emotion because it makes judgments about good and bad, but the morality enforced is highly personal: one person’s moral behavior may be another’s sin. Judgments about disgusting outsiders have been broadly implicated in societal violence, including genocide. Individual case examples show the intertwining of intercategorical disgust with disgust elicited by defenses such as reaction-formation and projective identification.
