Abjection

Now, I don't feel like self-censoring. I don't feel like watching the film play out and analysing the angle shots and the way the characters speak, even though I see myself in it, speaking in a particular way, walking in a particular way, keeping to myself in a particular way. I learned in my Writing Selves paper just last Monday about abjection, the state of being neither a subject nor an object. I haven't quite been able to put together words puzzle-piecefully enough to understand what it means but the feeling of it, I feel.

This is an attempt for my mind to stand under and pretend it has bare feet. Wordweb dictionary simply defines abjection as a low or downcast state. But that is the feeling of it. What does it entail, thought-wise, world-building-block-wise. Let's talk in one. If one goes about one's day thinking of oneself as the self, the self would be the subject. I realise I may now be getting simplistic. Bear with. The object of one's doings is usually outside oneself. I give cake to Anne. Cake is object. Anne is object. I is subject. Linguistics denotes these things. Linguistics mark the path for what our thoughts do, how they combine and imbine. Now, one can be both a subject and an object when one looks at oneself with distance, that distance implying some sort of consciousness unbelonging of the original subject but not able to be present as the object. So I screwed up the last sentence, and in that breaking of it, one can see the mutual exclusivity of subjectness and objectness. So if one is looking at oneself from a mental position that excludes the self, one is operating in an abject view; they are neither subject nor object but an absurdist atomised sobject. The abject state is thus one of looking-glassness, one of chained detachment.

I have experienced this state many times before, but with a name to give it now, and a Wikipedia entry existing about it, it somehow seems more... bearable. Like it's a thing. And I don't have to go searching for it because it's an idea that's crossed someone's mind before and that leaves me comforted to some extent. Permitted, say.

I feel perhaps it would be useful to also differentiate between the state of self-consciousness and abjection. While they blur, like tearful rain, there perhaps is some difference. Maybe they are like containers, one smaller than the other and in the other. Being conscious of the self is not necessarily inducive of a downcast state. One can be at peace with their inner body, with what they do. As such, I could say that being self-conscious excludes any idea of comparison with an external being or internalised external ideal. The focus is the self, and it is not in contrast to another perceived self elsewhere. Abjection, however, stirs in the pot of context and circumstance. One sees oneself as if from another inner mind, conscious that one is not fully embodying the experience of living because one is not fully unaware of oneself anymore. I notice here I imply that living fully embodied means living without awareness, or perhaps as awareness. Those two are different, vastly, but empty difference. From that other mind that identifies difference somewhere and thus is detached, kinda, the object becomes the whole of the self. And in the watching, one is thinking, one is seeing difference, perhaps because of what one has learned, perhaps of the situation one is in. As not the whole, one is not seeing the whole when one is in this abject state. Yet this viewpoint is rich in feeling.

This is the world viewpoint of the marginalised. I was reading a chapter from Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks" for my Selves paper and felt that what he was describing was a state of abjection, of seeing the black man as a fact in dejective contrast to the more malleable 'fact' of the white man, the latter being privileged in the dichotomy. He was looking at himself from within himself, but seeing blackness, a frame of reference and a mental structure assembled by history and bequeathed by conflicts and attempts to figure things out. He was in an abject space, writhing, tormented.

I like this word because it describes how I feel oftentimes plimbing in the mond. I went to a 21st birthday last night. Was quite looking forward to it, partly because the birthday girl is a close friend, partly because I know her boyfriend went to a lot of organisatory trouble to put together a gift for her and I wanted to see her receive it. The party was themed, I went as a Geek, quite eagerly so. The costume allowed me to feel good because it gave me permission to act like a geek, or if that's not blurry enough, weird. I had an excuse (just for show) to loosen up. I don't tend to be loose at clubby-manypeopled parties because I generally don't feel appreciated by them. There is a lot of apathy going on, and I don't enjoy being in apathetic spaces. The theme gave me the boots to dance like a like a virgin on the dance floor dance floor dance floor. Felt good, not because I was dancing well as a geek - because it still felt weird {abject} - but the fact that people were laughing made me content with it. It was kind of like a reassurance that what I was doing, even though it was weird, was accepted in some way. They were unlikely to repeat what I did, or go that far - not sure they could, since their frameworks are differently shaped in this respect, I feel - but I got some feeling of okayness out of it which is why it pleased me to do it. That okayness overrided any need for mental analysis of what I was doing. I was aware that I looked weird, but somehow the space seemed okay to be weird in, and that eased my mind. It made me enjoy my night more. I still had attention on myself, as I automatically seem to have at such parties, but I was not downtrodden, or more mildly so. This was a minor state of abjection. Last week's 21st, for another good friend, was an occasion for more properness, properness which I did not feel I delivered and thus I felt more abject and apart.

I thank you [you] for coming last night. I realise there were times when I left to my own devices, and I realise it was not your space of utmost comfort. It was not mine either, but somehow I felt more at ease in it. You were there with me, and that was enough to make me feel at peace, like it didn't matter. You reminded me that I was watching a movie, a film where people got drunk and chatted during speeches. Not the best movie. But a movie you and I were playing in. You looked beautiful in the blue.

On the way home from the party, I wasn't very talkative. A friend in the car mentioned that I was tired and didn't want to talk. I let her go with that explanation. Truth is, I didn't want to talk, not because I was tired (though I was getting tired, too) but because I felt comfortable in my state of abjection. Apart, but not. That middleness had and has something to it, something I like. Yes it is a state of low energy frequency, but I feel a glowing river below it, a reminder that can translate to things always passing, things being fine. Maybe this isn't abjection at all. I like the word though.