The Abject and Historical Trauma in Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights”

Natasza Korczarowska

natasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.pl
University of Lodz (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X

Abstract

According to Thomas Elsaesser, Julia Kristeva’s theoretical concept of abjection has extended beyond the psychoanalytical realm, receiving critical support in social and cultural studies, as a mode of defiance beyond victimhood. The author of the article chose Andrea Arnold’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights (2011) to probe the applicability of Kristeva’s concept for the purpose of film analysis. The film text is positioned in the wider context of the heritage film tradition (dark heritage), in the paradigm of Elsaesser’s cinema of abjection (haunted by traumatic history) and in Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality (disturbance of the political/social/cultural order). Arnold’s version of the classical Gothic novel accentuates the abjection of the “monstrous Other” through the issues of body, race and ethnicity. The article examines to what extent film can confront us with three fundamental modes of abjection: abject terror, abject language and the abject self.


Keywords:

Julia Kristeva, Andrea Arnold, abject, heritage film, cinema of abjection, uncanny, repulsion

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Published
2021-08-17

Cited by

Korczarowska, N. (2021) “The Abject and Historical Trauma in Andrea Arnold’s ‘Wuthering Heights’”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (114), pp. 6–30. doi: 10.36744/kf.756.

Authors

Natasza Korczarowska 
natasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.pl
University of Lodz Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X

Professor at the Department of Film and Audiovisual Media, Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz. She specializes in the history of Polish film, contemporary European cinema and the problems of historiophoty. She published the books: Ojczyzny prywatne [Private Homelands] (2007) and Inne spojrzenie [Another Way] (2013) – the latter devoted to the images of history in the Polish feature film after 1965. Since 2008 she has cooperated with the Polish Film Institute and the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute on the educational project Academy of Polish Film.



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