Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva, Questions and Answers

To what extent are we all ‘strangers to ourselves’, even in our own countries? Answer with reference to Kristeva’s book. Exile, the reality and practice of being barred from a native country, has prolifically influenced many philosophers’ theoretical writings. Indeed, Julia Kristeva being in exile from her native Bulgaria is a foreigner in an unascertained land. Being an outcast influence’s her philosophical, political and sociological extended essay Strangers to Ourselves published in 1991. The book addresses a problem that Kristeva has experienced first-hand: the struggle of being a foreigner in Western culture and the difficulties that people and nations have with treating foreigners residing in their motherland. Jealousy drives our nationalist temperaments and Kristeva explores the figure of the unconscious foreigner in all of us. Strangers to Ourselves draws on the difficulty that natives have in accepting the stranger within and if we can come to terms with this notion. The exile is often a foreigner in an unfamiliar place or a foreigner repressed within the native’s unconsci ous, however a feeling of ‘strangeness’ can also occur through an exclusion from the ‘hegemonic rationalism of modern society’ (Lechte: 79). There are at least two other forms of exile that can produce the foreign-ness in us: being an exile as a way to thrive intellectually and imaginatively and being alienated as a woman. Historically and in the contemporary world, natives incite prejudice ontoShow MoreRelatedEssay on Technologies of Seduction3757 Words   |  16 PagesTechnologies of Seduction â€Å"There can be no question of escaping the twisted logic of theoretical writing; there are only different ways of coming to terms with it.† (Shaviro 11) Blind Beast (Masumura Yasuzo 1969), Ghost in the Shell (Ohii Mamoru 1995), and Spirited Away (Miyazaki Hayao 2001) sustain the relation between the ‘body’ and ‘technology’: its terrific horror is its seduction. Captured bodies cut, cybernetic bodies hacked, and fattened bodies served. These three films all captureRead MoreMetamorphoses Within Frankenstein14861 Words   |  60 PagesAncient Mariner , who erupts into Mary Sh elley’s text as o ccasionally and inev itably as th e Monster into Victor Frankenstein’s lif e, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometh eus passes, like night, from land to land and w ith stang ely ad aptable powers of speech addresses itself to a critical aud ien ce that is larger and mor e diverse than that of almo st any oth er work of liter atur e in Eng lish : Mary Shelley’s Franken stein is famously reinterpretable. It can be a late v ersion of th e