Abjection and Otherness: The Sociological Study of Axing from the Abjection Approach

Axing (2018) is a movie directed by Beheooz Shoaibi depicting the influences of addiction on its female character’s social and personal identity. In the movie, Mahsa’s addiction is considered as a source of disgust and social contamination, and a reason for her abandonment. Therefore, Mahsa’s character and the way her social identity is constructed can be analyzed based on theories of abjection. Abjection in Axing has two narrative layers. The first layer pivots on Mahsa’s interactions with her ex-husband’s new family and her own family, while the second narrative layer relates Mahsa to the abject populations and zones who reside on the margins of society. Accordingly, in this article, the two approaches of abjection, psychological and social, are utilized for the study of addiction as social abjection and an addicted person as “the abject”. The two approaches are found to share three same features: “the otherness of the abject”, “its discursive construction” and “wandering on the borders of subject”. Therefore, by utilizing these three features, the construction of an addicted person as a construct of abjection is studied and its relation with the formation of abject populations and zones are explained. In this article it is clarified that the mentioned features are not only the main factors in the social construction of an addicted person as “the abject”, but also result in the formation of abject populations and zones.