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Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts

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Abjection and Informe

Konstantina Georgelou
Published online: 13 Jun 2014.

To cite this article: Konstantina Georgelou (2014) Abjection and Informe, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts,
19:1, 25-32, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2014.908081

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 Abjection and Informe
Operations of debasing
KONSTANTINA GEORGELOU
Abjection has been largely interrogated in the
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context of the visual arts and deployed
through performance art, but it has not been
taken up by the performing arts. Particularly
in the 1990s a number of writings, discussions
and exhibitions took place in the United States
and in Europe, which arguably constituted
and at times criticized ‘abject art’. Alluding
to the aesthetics of filth, obscenity and decay
by putting on display excrement, urine and
other bodily substances, abject art is usually
approached through discourses of
psychoanalysis that emphasize the visceral
repulsion and attraction evoked by artworks.
Although one may think that abjection
would be an equally prominent notion for
discussing theatre practices of the 1980s and
the 1990s,1 this did not happen. Abjection
therefore still remains a relatively new
domain within the performing arts. Through
a historical and theoretical exposition of
abjection, abject art and the notion of the
formless – I suggest considering the latter
as contiguous to the abject – it is herewith
proposed that abjection can contribute to
the examination of dramaturgical and
compositional processes in contemporary
performances. In particular, I am referring
to performances that are thought to evoke
unsettlement not because of the provocation
and shock that substances attributed to the
body may generate when presented on stage
(e.g., blood, urine etc.), but rather because
they express and propose a certain other way
of seeing bodies, (non)humans and other
aspects of ‘the world’, which disrupts binaries,
such as object–subject relations. Theorized
through abjection, this other ‘way of seeing’
PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 19·1 : pp.25-32
http: //dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2014.908081
can be understood as a process of radically
debasing standardized conceptions and
perceptions of how things are, how they should
or could be.
For abjection to become productive in
performance theory today, this notion must
disentangle itself from what was predominantly
understood as abject art a few decades ago.
Abjection is, namely, to a great extent limited
by this historical and theoretical interpretation
of the notion, which tended to literalize the
abject in terms of substances and to overlook
how it functions as a situational notion that
‘lowers’ and destabilizes binary thinking.
In order to introduce it into the realm of
the performing arts and render it useful as
a conceptual tool, this article cautions against
reified practices and understandings of 1
For instance, the work of
Tadeusz Kantor, Jerzy
abjection in the way that abject art had largely Grotowski, Jan Fabre and
instructed. It rather contends that abjection the early work of Socìetas
Raffaello Sanzio.
operates as a performative notion on the basis
of a network of vectors and not of a substance
used therein.
More specifically, I propose studying and
theorizing abjection alongside the notion of
l’informe (in English, ‘the formless’). Both of
these notions derive from Georges Bataille’s
writings (particularly from the 1930s) and
point to an operation of debasing. This dual
investigation seeks to unpack abjection, stress
its performative nature and make it productive
for performing arts theory. This article aims
to provide a critical overview of how abjection
and l’informe have been approached in
philosophy and in the arts, seeking to launch
a multifaceted understanding of abjection that
is not necessarily attached to the reification of
the abject.
ISSN 1352-8165 print/1469-9990 online 25
© 2014 TAYLOR & FRANCIS

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2
Judith Butler has been
critical of Kristeva’s
primordialization of the
maternal body in her
books Gender Trouble
(1990) and Bodies that
Matter (1993), exactly
because it is considered as
primordial and thus
pre-discursive and
independent of historical
and cultural inscriptions.
26
ABJECT ART AND THE POWERS
OF HORROR
As already indicated, abject art has been
associated with dirt, bodily waste and
other substances but also with grotesque
perspectives of femininity, which is largely
due to Julia Kristeva’s analysis of abjection in
relationship to feminine de-sublimation and
the maternal in her book Powers of Horror:
An essay on abjection. Before examining
Kristeva’s critical approach, though, it is
worthwhile to map out the emergence and
main characteristics of abject art. Although
the tendency to work on the territory of
the repellent and the extreme can already
be traced in performance and action art
of the 1960s and 1970s and even earlier in
Surrealism and in Antonin Artaud’s theatre
of cruelty, it was not until some decades
later that this tendency was conceptualized
through abjection. Two major exhibitions
held in the Whitney Museum, ‘Dirt and
Domesticity: Constructions of the Feminine’
(1992) and ‘Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire
in American Art’ (1993) brought abjection
into the practice and theory of the visual arts
in the late twentieth century and showcased
the work of artists such as Cindy Sherman,
Carolee Schneemann, Andres Serrano, Mary
Kelly and Marcel Duchamp. In addition, in
1994 the publication of a symposium on abject
art, entitled ‘The politics of the signifier II:
A conversation on the “informe” and the
abject’, appeared in the journal October with
the participation of leading art theorists who
had gathered to discuss the implications of
abjection in the arts. And only a year later,
the exhibition ‘Féminin–Masculin: Le sexe de
l’art’ took place at Centre Pompidou in Paris,
with a long list of artists linked to abject art
such as Mike Kelley, Gilbert & George, Louise
Bourgeois and others (Krauss 1996: 20).
This sudden and compelling emergence
of abject art was not without consequences,
when one thinks how quickly galleries and
museums domesticated it and how easily
the notion of the abject was reified into the
PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 19·1 : ON ABJECTION
use of urine, excrement and other bodily
fluids in or as art objects. In an interview
with Sylvère Lotringer, Kristeva criticizes
this objectification and fetishization of
abject things in the arts, arguing that ‘it
becomes a sort of final goal as if this were
being presented as a model, as a sort of
program. It becomes normativism in reverse’
and stating that ‘from the moment that you
establish it in a sort of image or something
representable, salable, exposable, capitalizable,
you lose it’ (Kristeva 1999: 29–30). Against
this background it is ironic to think of the
great influence Kristeva’s study on abjection
had on the creation of such artworks. Offering
a psychoanalytical and philosophical reading
of abjection, she proposed an understanding
of this notion that links it to moments that the
subject is ‘in crisis’. Along these lines, Kristeva
discusses writers and artists and mainly
focuses on Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Kristeva’s study addresses and analyzes the
abject as a complex notion that conceptualizes
avant-garde art and its reception, describes
abject things of the body and at the same time
suggests a psychic process of subjecthood that
is related to the maternal. Understood as what is
neither subject nor object but rather of the
in-between and the ambiguous (1982: 4),
abjection is linked to the shattering of
subjecthood.As a psychic process it refers to a
crisis of the subject, to a violent but
nevertheless intimate borderline experience of
the constitution of the ‘I’. In her study, abjection
in fact signifies the reiteration and the reminder
of the moment the infant is separated from the
maternal, which mark a primordial moment of
individuation.2
Abjection is equally significant in the artistic
context for Kristeva. Couching it in terms of
literature, her analysis of abjection is situated
in a psycholinguistic context. The encounters
between reader and certain writings are
considered to generate self-less, cathartic
states that disturb the boundaries between ‘the
insides’ and ‘the outsides’ of subjectivity and
social order. As she writes about the experience
of reading Céline in particular:
 When reading Céline we are seized at that fragile
spot of our subjectivity where our collapsed
defenses reveal, beneath the appearances of
a fortified castle, a flayed skin; neither inside
nor outside, the wounding exterior turning
into an abominable interior, war bordering on
putrescence, while social and family rigidity,
that beautiful mask, crumbles within the beloved
abomination of innocent vice. (1982: 135)
In his article ‘Obscene, abject, traumatic’,
Hal Foster discusses Kristeva’s approach,
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acknowledging that it invites contradictory
readings of the abject. He initially explains
that for her the abject is alien but also intimate
with the subject; it ‘is what I must get rid of
in order to be an I at all’ (1996: 114). However,
as he notes, it is ambiguous whether it marks
a condition or an operation, which is to say that
it is not clear whether it disrupts or validates
the social order. Foster’s critical questions
‘hit the nerve’ of Kristeva’s theorization of
abjection, demonstrating that it may preserve
the same status quo it seeks to subvert:
For her the operation to abject is fundamental
to the maintenance of subjectivity and society,
while the condition to be abject is subversive of
both formations. Is the abject, then, disruptive
of subjective and social orders or foundational of
them, a crisis in these orders or a confirmation of
them? (1996: 114)
‘This word abjection accounted for my interest
in the fluid states of structures’, Kristeva says in
an interview (1999: 16) some years after having
written her book. But in spite of her proclaimed
interest in volatile structures, her study
recuperates certain substances such as waste
products and bodily fluids as abjects, arriving at
the corpse as the utmost of abjection:
the corpse, seen without God and outside of
science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death
infecting life. Abject. It is something rejected from
which one does not part, from which one does not
protect oneself as from an object. (1982: 4)
It needs to be thus recognized that Kristeva
on the one hand does not wish to literalize
the abject and prefers examining its structural
fluidity, while on the other hand her study does
not avoid thematizing substances and essences
of disgust. This contradiction has contributed
to the anti-aesthetic model for, one could
say, ‘abject objects of art’ and has prompted
debates about what abjection really ‘is’.
Rosalind Krauss understands the cause
of this confusion in Kristeva’s project on
a discursive level, maintaining that her analysis
tries to balance between post-structuralism
and phenomenology, which are not easily
compatible and hence lead her to a primarily
pragmatic approach of the abject. She states
that
[h]er departure from what she must have viewed
as old-fashioned structuralism involved, at one
and the same time, the positing of a performative
dimension as crucial to linguistic analysis and
understanding that dimension’s subject-of-
enunciation in a phenomenological way, which
carries her analysis right back into categorizing
and naming. (Krauss 1994: 7)
ABJECTION: A SOCIOPOLITICAL
CONCEPT
In 1934 Bataille was the first to conceptualize
abjection. He wrote the text ‘L’abjection et les
formes misérables’ [Abjection and miserable
forms], which was left incomplete and belonged
to his Essays on Sociology. Strategically
connected to the sociopolitical upheaval of
his time, this text could be seen as Bataille’s
non-elaborate response to the fascist coup
that had failed in Paris in the same year, which
made the fascist threat very vivid in France.
Written in a vehement tone, this essay exposes
the complex social processes of separating and
connecting the ‘nobles’ and the ‘misérables’, as
he calls those who are made abject in society.
His understanding of abjection is therefore not
attached to any specific substance, although he
writes about ‘abject things’ like filth, snot and
vermin, because he sees them as ‘objects of the
imperative act of exclusion’ (1999: 11). Without
asserting explicit essentialist connotations as to
what abjection designates, he rather conducted
a sociopolitical reflection of the heterogeneity
between the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ parts of the
society. As his essay shows, this heterogeneity
G E O RG E LO U : A B J E CT I O N A N D I N F O R M E 27
 produces its own excess and waste, which
reduces the working class (the misérables) to
the lowest state and renders them bestial. As
they are overtaken by filth and decay, they are
unable to either react or be assimilated by the
rational operations of the State that pursue
homogenization. Nevertheless, the contact
between them is inevitable, and this is how
abjection is being generated according to
Bataille’s syllogism. As he puts it: ‘Thus human
abjection results from the material impossibility
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of avoiding contact with abject things: it is but
the abjection of things passed on to those who
are exposed to them’ (1999: 11). Considering
abjection as the imperative act of exclusion and
non-recognition from within, Bataille parallels
it with sadism and claims that it manifests itself
in the form of the cruelty exercized on a person.
Delving into the psychosexual domain
alongside the socio-political, Bataille may give
the impression of being attracted to fascism
while at the same time rejecting both fascism
and the bourgeoisie. However, I believe that this
continuous contrast and exposure of binaries is
intrinsic to how his practice of writing functions
and to what this essay produces. It namely
manifests a strategic discursive heterogeneity
and rupture – similar to most of his writings –
which demand from the reader to look at how it
operates. In this case, it produces simultaneous
attraction and aversion towards abject states
and in this way exposes and destabilizes the
gap between the two extremes (the ‘high’ and
the ‘low’) that generate one another. Following
Bataille’s critical thinking, social heterogeneity
produces its own waste (the misérables, the
‘lower than low’), which means that the ‘nobles’
are – in a scatological sense – inevitably
connected to the production of this waste,
while at the same time they deny its existence.
This paradox causes repulsion and violence
according to Bataille.
His subversive writing resists language
being understood metaphorically, which is to
say that his writing is made performative by
seeking to actualize rather than to represent
the violence of this heterogeneity. Denis Hollier
acknowledges the particularity of Bataille’s
28 PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 19·1 : ON ABJECTION
tone, stating that the shift of his writing in the
direction of politics
is heterological only on the condition that it
follows the subversive route (the old mole’s
route), that is, on condition that it be addressed
to a proletariat defined by its total and unopposed
exclusion (its ‘abjection’) from the balanced
system of social exchange. (Krauss 1996: 100)
According to this line of thought, the writing
of the non-representable waste of society is
a manifestation of accepting its exclusion (and
eventually, destabilizing it), which is a political
and subversive act in itself. Through such
a reading of Bataille’s essay, one can therefore
recognize the operation of the abject. It is
not just used as a word to define a class or
some substance but more as a conceptual and
performative tool for delving into and marking
out the perversion of how the ‘lower than
low’ is being produced and manifests itself in
the society.
The notion of abjection emerges in
a particular context and addresses a specific
structural dynamic for Bataille. The structural
force of this notion though can easily be
overshadowed by the specific themes discussed.
Considering contemporary performing arts as
process-based arts that work on the relationship
between the stage/performers and spectators,
suggests that an operational and structural
understanding of abjection is more appropriate
for their conceptualization in terms of
dramaturgy, composition and poetics. On that
basis, I suggest positioning abjection alongside
the Bataillean notion of l’informe in order to
unpack it further. Being philosophical, more
abstract and, hence, less rigid than abjection
(as it is conceptualized by Bataille), the latter
points to the undoing of form from within, to
an operation of formlessness that evokes an
experience of the limits. As it is demonstrated,
the two notions, albeit different in how they are
conditioned and articulated, work in the same
way: as processes of undoing and lowering. By
unsettling heterologies, they may eventually
produce a dissemination of possibilities
and connections.
 L’ I N F O R M E
Bataille’s notion of l’informe first appeared in
the ‘Critical Dictionary’, a section of Documents
that was being published in 1929–30, a few
years before he wrote about abjection. This
Dictionary consisted of a series of entries in
non-alphabetical order, the meanings of which
would evade classification and definition (e.g.,
‘The Eye’, ‘Dust’, ‘Metamorphosis’, ‘Abattoir’).
This collection of slippery words deliberately
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remained incomplete, since the publication
was never conceived as a possible totality.
Although Bataille dedicated only a few lines
for it, l’informe holds a central place within
this collection of terms. Namely, it marks their
qualitative significance, their intensity and force
of resistance. Bataille writes about the informe:
A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the
meaning of words, but their tasks. Thus formless
is not only an adjective having a given meaning
but a term that serves to bring things down in the
world, generally requiring that each thing have its
form. What it designates has no rights in any sense
and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider
or an earthworm. In fact, for academic men to be
happy, the universe would have to take shape.
All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter
of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical
frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the
universe resembles nothing and is only formless
amounts to saying that the universe is something
like a spider or a spit. (Bois and Krauss 1999: 5)
In view of the expressions ‘mathematical
frock-coat’ and ‘for academic men to be happy’,
one realizes that Bataille attacked classical
philosophical discourse.3 And his practice of
writing resisted the act of writing itself, which
he considered to be confined by the
metaphoricity of language. The ‘Critical
Dictionary’ actually reflects his ‘sabotage
against the academic world and the spirit of the
system’ (Bois and Kraus 1999: 16) and his
resistance against the desire to attribute certain
‘shape to the universe’. More specifically
l’informe, like abjection, belongs to what he
named ‘heterology’: the science of the ‘wholly
other’ (31, 47), which refers to processes of
resisting social homogeneity (which includes all
elements that can be assimilated in
a productive, consumerist society).
Documents was a collaborative journal, but
Bataille’s contribution was more central and
often included inappropriate and radical
material. Moreover, the journal had a specific
interest in imagery. The texts were juxtaposed
with profane photographs and illustrations,
producing ambivalent impressions. For
instance, one can take note of the images from
a slaughterhouse that appeared next to
‘Abattoir’, the exposed plant genitalia for ‘The
language of the flowers’ and the uncanny
mannequins for ‘Dust’. Probably this is also the
main reason why the notion of l’informe has
been conceptualized mostly with regard to
image and within the field of visual arts,
particularly through the works of Georges
Didi-Huberman (1995) and Yve-Alain Bois and
Rosalind Krauss (1997). These studies on
Bataille, however, also prove that even though
there is considerable lapse of time between
them this gap ceases to matter once the
operational force of the formless shows itself to
be still productive for critical thinking.4
Boyan Manchev recently examined the
formless in a more philosophical perspective
in his book L’altération du monde: Pour
une esthétique radicale. This study still
concentrates on the issue of the image, but
it also encompasses a greater view on radical
aesthetics, as its title suggests. More precisely
about l’informe, Manchev suggests that it should
be understood through the operation of ‘base 3
Michael Richardson
comments that ‘Bataille
materialism’, which criticized onto-theological did not renounce the role
ideas, even that of ‘being’ (2009: 130). This of a philosopher. If he
rejected the discourse of
operation referred to a constant resistance
philosophy, he did so
against the idealization and ontologizing because he rejected all
of matter, according to Bataille. Particularly discourse’ (1998: 2).
with his texts ‘Matérialisme’ and ‘Le bas 4
Karoline Gritzner’s
matérialisme et la gnose’, Bataille attacked recent article on
classic materialism, which expressed an formlessness and
participation ‘at the limit’
ontological approach to matter, in the sense of within performing arts
understanding matter as a thing-in-itself. And (2011) is noteworthy in
this respect. It brings to
at the same time, he insisted on a ‘base matter’ the foreground a social
that is foreign to human ideals and refuses to perspective of
participatory performance
let itself be reduced by the great ontological through the discussion of
machines (Bataille 1970: 225). In other words, this notion.
G E O RG E LO U : A B J E CT I O N A N D I N F O R M E 29
 Bataille sought to attack the dichotomy between
spirit and matter as well as the human project
of transforming matter into spirit. So, for him,
‘matter becomes scandalous, something that is
constantly bringing us back down to the level of
the beasts’ (Richardson 1998: 12). In this sense
it also becomes clear that, in Bataille’s thought,
abjection refuses to be understood in terms of
substances and objects.
This scatological dimension of matter is
intrinsic to human idealism, spirit and beauty.
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This becomes even more evident in Bataille’s
text ‘The language of the flowers’, which
appeared also in Documents. Foregrounding
the relationship between ‘high’ and ‘low’
once again, in this text he discusses flowers
and plants as a way to exercize philosophical
thinking. He also acknowledges though that
such a ‘substitution’ might seem absurd to
classical philosophy because forms that come
from nature are considered too ‘low’ for the
‘elevated’ spirit of philosophy (1970: 178).
However, this movement of ‘lowering’ marks
the scatological performativity of his text: it
undoes the expectations and demands (at least
of his time) about how ‘serious’ philosophy
should be and, thus, creates tension within
thought about what ‘high’ and ‘low’ define;
as he asserts, writing about flowers creates
‘confusing mockery into everything that is, due
to pitiful avoidances, elevated, noble, sacred’
(178, my translation).
Moreover, Bataille’s analysis on the human
appreciation of the beauty of flowers uncovers
an analogous hierarchy of privilege and power.
Namely, he remarks that flowers generally
symbolize love and ideal beauty for humans
(174, 175). But mankind refuses to admit that
this beauty is also superficial, ephemeral and
fragile, since flowers die very fast, and as they
grow they also become ugly, because pollen
‘dirties’ the petals. In other words, their ideal
‘form’ and seductiveness rests on their baseness.
Krauss underscores this point as well and
argues that Bataille’s obsession with ‘dirt’ and
‘stain’ discloses the scatological operation
of the formless, which is ‘to do something to
neutralization; to lower it’ (Bataille 1999: 5).
30 PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 19·1 : ON ABJECTION
And mankind’s inability to come to terms
with the baseness within all things is the point
that Bataillean thought constantly exposes
and attacks.
Bataille’s understanding of base matter is
crucial for Manchev, who holds that it marks
the movement of an endless resistance that
precedes structures of force and authority
(Manchev 2009: 95). For him, the formless is
a dynamic concept that becomes perceived
only through an experience of ‘touching the
limits’ of form, and through that touch, form
is transformed. This haptic experience of
the limits manifests itself as an alteration,
according to Manchev. He argues that alteration
opens up form to a dynamic recomposition,
taking place only when the limits of form
are experienced (2009: 72). His perspective
on the ‘limits’ thus introduces an additional
understanding of the structural force of the
informe and abjection, not just as negative
performatives (operations of undoing) but
also able to evoke experience of the limits of
form. In view of these conceptualizations, the
notions show a negative performativity and an
experience ‘of the limits’ of expectations, norms,
morals and regimes by enabling different ways
of thinking to emerge.
The informe has been under-theorized in
comparison to abjection. However, Bois and
Krauss reflected on the formless in connection
to modern visual arts and their contemporary
reception in 1997, which could be considered,
in part, an attempt to withdraw attention and
de-fetishize abject art. In 1996 they jointly
curated an exhibition at the Centre Georges
Pompidou in Paris under the title L’informe:
Mode d’emploi [Formless: A User’s Guide], which
was an attempt to demonstrate the impulse and
operational force of the formless as a conceptual
tool. Their aim was to further the understanding
of modern art, to pick apart again the categories
of ‘form’ and ‘content’ (1999: 9) and to offer an
alternative reading, which concentrated on the
‘tasks’, the particular performativity rather than
the classification of modern art (21).
Bois and Krauss introduced an illuminating
examination of Bataille’s general thinking that
 allows a careful application of the formless
within the analysis of art. More specifically, they
understood l’informe to be structural, meaning
that it has a structural function. Krauss precisely
remarks that it is ‘a way for Bataille to group
a variety of strategies for knocking form off its
pedestal’ (Bois et al. 1994: 4). As a result, they
rightly avoided giving any definition of the
formless, and yet they managed to sustain its
implications for the sake of its theorization.
Notably, they ‘put the formless to work, not only
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to map certain trajectories, or slippages, but in
some small way to “perform” them’ (Bois and
Krauss 1999: 21). With this project the aim was
therefore to discuss visual arts of the modern
period not in relation to semantic registers of
any particular object but rather with reference
to the grid of interpretation that determines the
assimilation of these registers.
READING ABJECTION THROUGH THE
INFORME
In the symposium published in October,
abjection and the informe were also brought
together, to shed light on how to understand
abject art. In this conversation, Helen
Molesworth claims that she would lean
more towards l’informe because it allows for
slippage, whereas abjection is too associated
with identity politics and gender, mainly due
to Kristeva’s analysis (Bois et al. 1994: 6).
Also Hal Foster considers abjection to be too
oppositional, thus creating an ‘inside–outside’
model, while the informe suggests a different
relationship to the body (6). An inside–outside
model might solidify boundaries between races,
sexualities etc., Molesworth denotes, preventing
them from becoming more fluid (6).
Although this discussion proposed alternative
routes for conceptualizing abjection that are
worthwhile to examine, it did not reach any
concrete suggestions. On the contrary, the last
parts of the conversation showed discontent
regarding the implications and paradoxes
of their overall theorization of abject art.
In my opinion, this happened because the
performativity of Bataille’s writing in his both
texts was not adequately explored. The focus
was rather trapped in the question about
whether abjection and l’informe are scatological
or scatterological concepts, namely whether
they are about the subject or the structure. For
instance, they compared John Miller’s sculpture
of shit to Richard Serra’s splash piece from 1968
to examine what is structural and what is not.
Similarly, Foster criticized Bataille for opting
for ‘the smelly shoe over the beautiful picture’
and for being ‘fixed in perversion’ that leads
abject art to the desire of reversing ‘the perverse
into the most potent’ (Foster 1996: 118). These
remarks however do not do justice to the
Bataillean operational and negative practice
of writing that seeks to undo perversion
structurally by exposing it.
Against this background, an analysis of the
impact of Bataille’s writings (for both notions)
could shed more light onto what these notions
do in relation to subject and/or to structure
according to the specificity of an artwork. As
a precursor to post-structuralism, Bataille
sought to overcome the restrictions of language
from within its contextual and referential
conditionings and to stress it to the limits,
which has an impact on how one thinks and
how one understands things. This movement
of exposing ruptures and debasing needs to
be taken into account when discussing these
notions and their possible theorization for art.
When reflected through the informe, abjection
thus opens up to more possibilities that are
relevant to the conceptualization of performing
arts today. Both notions map an alteration in
a structural manner: a process of undoing that
does not arrive at a conclusion but is rather an
ongoing operation of debasing. In Bataille’s
writings specifically, the informe addresses
essentialist conceptions of language and
thinking, whereas the abject is more directly
associated to social phenomena of violence
and exclusion.
Notwithstanding their differences, they are
hereby suggested as negative performatives
because they ‘lower’ and undo taxonomic
and rationalized views of the world that are
still at work today. In this light, abjection,
G E O RG E LO U : A B J E CT I O N A N D I N F O R M E 31
 disengaged from literalized interpretations, can
be employed as a theoretical tool that maps,
articulates and possibly reinvents performances
as phenomena that are intrinsic to existing
social and discursive hierarchical structures,
which can be debased and unsettled.
REFERENCES
Bataille, Georges (1970) ‘Le bas matérialisme et la gnose’,
‘Le langage des fleurs’ and ‘Matérialisme’, in Oeuvres
Complètes I, Paris: Gallimard.
Downloaded by [Memorial University of Newfoundland] at 02:50 07 October 2014
Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity, New York and London: Routledge.
Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive
Limits of ‘Sex’, New York and London: Routledge.
Foster, Hal (1996) ‘Obscene, abject, traumatic’, October
78: 107–24.
Gritzner, Karoline (2011) ‘Form and formlessness:
Participation at the limit’, Performance Research 16(4):
109–116.
Krauss, Rosalind (1996) ‘“Informe” without conclusion’,
October 78: 89–105.
Kristeva, Julia (1982) Powers of Horror: An essay on

Bataille, Georges (1999 [1934]) ‘Abjection and miserable abjection, New York: Columbia University Press.
forms’, trans. Yvonne Shaffir, in Sylvère Lotringer (ed.)
Kristeva, Julia (1999) ‘Fetishizing the abject’, trans.
More and Less, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,
Jeanine Herman, in Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) More and Less,
pp. 8–14.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 15–35.
Bois, Yve-Alain, and Rosalind Krauss (1999 [1997])
Manchev, Boyan (2009) L’altération du monde: Pour une
Formless: A user’s guide, New York: Zone.
esthétique radicale, Paris: Lignes.
Bois, Yve-Alain, Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, Denis
Richardson, Michael, ed. (1998) Georges Bataille: Essential
Hollier, Rosalind Krauss and Helen Molesworth (1994) ‘The
writings, London: Sage.
politics of the signifier II: A conversation on the “informe”
and the abject’, October 57: 3–21.

32 PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 19·1 : ON ABJECTION