Kristeva’s Abjection and Embodiment in Girls’ PubertyThe Analysis of Three Teen Novels

Considering human as an embodied perceiver and body as a socio-cultural phenomenon; cultural body, physical shape and behavior, holy and impure body, object-body, subject-body, etc. were proposed and valuated in different discourses. Julia Kristeva’s abjection theory deals with language, subject, and the impure/ abject relationship. Abjection is the process of ejecting something considered unclean by the subject and with this scheme she tries to defend her subjectivity’s sanctum, a subjectivity created by lingual ejections and dejections. Since the impure/ abject always exists in some way, there always exists the tension between subject and impurity. In-process subject makes connections with her body, others, or other objects in language and through language. The present article considering body experience in sociology discourse deals with Kristeva’s abjection theory and object-body of subject/ girls in Farhad Hassanzadeh’s “Hasti”, Fariba Dindar’s “Dear Squirrelfish”, and Shadi Khoashkar’s “Diaries of the Back of the Class Tree” novels. It shows how symbolic order/ thing portrays subjects/ girls’ bodies during puberty and especially when faced with menstrual blood as unholy, impure, and unclean. The belief to the objectiveness of body is appeared in/to forms and attitudes such as subjects’ nausea, secrecy, rejection, escape, denial, panic, and shame. The new body situation is ejected and pushed to the side as the impure. This abjection both denies the teenager the possibility of body’s common and reasonable living during teen hood and keeps her in the fear and anxiety of the manner of escaping from this impurity.