The problems abjection causes are really the problems that are created whenever we only have two categories in which to sort things.

Then she flushes that idea with a chapter of Lacanian jargon, pretty much the sole academic vocabulary that just reads in my mind as "Bullshit bullshit bullshit. Psychoanalytic thinkers would likely locate the problem somewhere in that zone where the sexual overlaps with the parental, aka "the ick field. Kristeva also associates the abject with jouissance: "One does not know it, one does not desire it, one joys in it [on en jouit].They've got to load up the structure of signification with all this inherent gender stuff: sign, meaning, and discourse is the real of The Law of the Father, while all that indeterminate iffyness of the imaginary is all on Mom which nowadays makes us chuckle and shake our heads gently with an amused mutter: oh, those Freudians. Religion, according to Kristevea, is a natural response to the abject, for if one truly experiences the abject, they are prone to engage in all manners of perverse and anti-social behaviors. In Pouvoirs de l'horreur Kristeva explores abjection, a condition which is fundamental in the formation of identity, where the "abject" subject acts in a transgressive revolt of the Oedipal (sexual) identity and of the sexual specificity.

In the epic journey you are on from being an egg, indistinguishable from your mother, to an adult, you are becoming someone who can change things to suit you.She explores how art and religion each offer ways of purifying the abject, arguing that amid abjection, boundaries between subject and object break down. The power of her work however is that she is able to connect the appeal of horror, of the abject, to the concept of the sublime in a way that finally investigates why we enjoy an attraction to things that would seem only to repulse any sane creature. In phobia, Kristeva reads the trace of a pre-linguistic confrontation with the abject, a moment that precedes the recognition of any actual object of fear: "The phobic object shows up at the place of non-objectal states of drive and assumes all the mishaps of drive as disappointed desires or as desires diverted from their objects". Kristeva can be a tough read and a grounding in the basics of Freud, Lacan and Melanie Klein are a good preliminary preparation prior to reading her books.