Maternal Function
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All occurrences
Where it appears in the corpus (2)
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#01
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection · Julia Kristeva · p.100
POWERS OF HORROR > SEMIOTICS OF BIBLICAL ABOMINATION
Theoretical move: Kristeva argues that biblical impurity (tahor/tame) is not simply a demonic force or a divine ordinance, but a "logicizing" of what departs from the symbolic order—rooted in the cathexis of maternal function—which monotheism subordinates to the Law, thereby instituting a "strategy of identity" constitutive of the speaking subject and social community alike.
such a force is rooted, historically (in the history of religions) and subjectively (in the structuration of the subject's identity), in the cathexis of maternal function—mother, women, reproduction.
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#02
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection · Julia Kristeva · p.110
POWERS OF HORROR > THE MAN/GOD DISTINCTION: A DIETARY DISTINCTION
Theoretical move: Kristeva argues that the biblical system of dietary abomination is not merely a code of food taboos but a structural logic of separation whose deepest function is to differentiate the speaking subject (the son) from the archaic, abject maternal body — thereby establishing that symbolic identity, signifiability, and law itself are founded on the violent exclusion of the feminine/maternal.
separating oneself from the phantasmatic power of the mother, that archaic Mother Goddess ... a phantasmatic mother who also constitutes, in the specific history of each person, the abyss that must be established as an autonomous (and not encroaching) place and distinct object