Appropriating the abject: Witchcraft in Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi’s Suspiria (1977) and David Kajganich and Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake | Intellect Skip to content
1981
New Cinemas Volume 18 is the 2020 volume
  • ISSN: 1474-2756
  • E-ISSN: 2040-0578

Abstract

This article explores representations of witchcraft in relation to Julia Kristeva’s 1980 essay . It begins by investigating the genesis of Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi’s depiction of witchcraft in their 1977 horror film , drawing on historical studies of witchcraft by Ronald Hutton and Marion Gibson. In particular, it examines the characterization of the witches’ coven as an all-female, all-powerful death cult – before proposing that Kristeva’s essay on the abject can be seen to explain this specific conceptualization, in line with Barbara Creed’s analysis of how horror film has inherited the role of ‘purifying’ the abject from religious ritual. The second half of this article then focuses on David Kajganich and Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of , reflecting on how the later film can be seen to attempt to redeem the association between witchcraft and abjectness. In doing so, this article reflects on how the attempt to rescue the witch while maintaining an association with the abject is contiguous with other contemporary depictions of witchcraft. It is proposed that such efforts amount to a Foucauldian attempt at a ‘reverse discourse’ celebrating the subversive potential of an initially derogatory identity formation – but that Kristeva’s writing points to the limitations of appropriating the abject in this way.

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2020-07-01
2024-04-27
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