Archaic Mother
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#01
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection · Julia Kristeva · p.87
POWERS OF HORROR > DEFILEMENT RITE—A SOCIAL ELABORATION OF THE BORDERLINE PATIENT? > FEAR OF WOMEN—FEAR OF PROCREATION
Theoretical move: Kristeva argues that pollution rituals and abjection are socially elaborated responses to the archaic generative power of the mother, functioning to separate the speaking being from the body and secure patrilineal/patriarchal order; the Indian caste system's endogamy is read as a special case where sexual balance is achieved at the cost of multiplying abjective separations elsewhere in the social hierarchy.
Fear of the archaic mother turns out to be essentially fear of her generative power. It is this power, a dreaded one, that patrilineal filiation has the burden of subduing.