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A single rose, a gorgeous sunset, the intricate design of what had previously been an “ugly” insect—I cannot guess what she saw, but she saw. And in excitement and rapture, she cried out to her mate (whatever form of “marriage” they had in those days) “Oh, look at this, look!” and he looked and he saw. And beauty was created in a world that had been flat and dead and meaningless until that moment.
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If it be true that the abject simultaneously beseeches and pulverizes the subject, one can understand that it is experienced at the peak of its strength when that subject, weary of fruitless attempts to identify with something on the outside, finds the impossible within; when it finds that the impossible constitutes its very being, that it is none other than abject. The abjection of self would be the culminating form of that experience of the subject to which it is revealed that all its objects are based merely on the inaugural loss that laid the foundations of its own being. There is nothing like the abjection of self to show that all abjection is in fact recognition of the want on which any being, meaning, language, or desire is founded.
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Julia Kristeva | Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection