Blood, sweat and tears: failed mappings of un-abjection in Hostage and La Haine

Abstract

This article discusses M. Kassovitz's La Haine and C. Giannaris' Hostage. It starts from the tendency to naturalize the meanings that are attributed to bodily odours and fluids, and then it investigates some of the consequences of their rhetoric handlings. Doing so, it points out the insufficiency of disregarding bodily fluids or odours when one attempts to put abject to rest. Second, it discusses the possibility of using a bodily fluid such as tears, in order to create an inclusive space where borderlines and seclusions would fade away; it shows, nevertheless, that the ground of non-abjection in which this attempt was rooted proved to be rather fragile. Third, it examines the building up of a voluntaristic attitude vis-à-vis bodily fluids, namely saliva and blood, and it explores the ways in which this collides with their preascribed meanings. Fourth, it records cases in which excrements such as faeces and urine could eventually be tolerated and, in a way, un-abjectified; however, it shows how a simple evocation is enough to retransform them into dilutive factors prohibiting the creation of a common space, as well as into a channel through which oneself can be addressed by the other and turned into an outcast.Bodily odours are seeping and ubiquitous, furtive and haunting; reminding of a specific here-and-now or attributed to scattered subjects, they signify in a hedonistic or in a repulsive way. Bodily fluids, on the other hand, are KeywordsLa Haine Hostage abjection bodily fluids odours