Here, Kristeva points out, the ego splits. The person is both subject and abject at once, but she also poses herself as an Other - a judging Other who finds the abject loathsome even while the subject is drawn to it. Kristeva describes a feeling of jouissance , where the abject is not known or desired, but simply taken joy in. The I is not the homogeneous I of a simple subject with a single identity. This fragmented vision of the self comes from a time before birth, according to Kristeva.
Abjection is a remembrance of the pre-objectal stage.
In the womb, one is not aware of the self because there are no objects to compare oneself to, and there is no language to differentiate anything. In the painful passion of the abject, the ego is splintered and finds joy in the indescribable - the unknowable and the undesirable. When the subject is dispersed, there is room for simultaneous diversity, for a multiplicity instead of an identity. In the absence of dualisms, there are no marginalizations - all possibilities are equally viable. Just as ancient art in Eurocentric cultures was reflective of the desire to realize a perfect, whole, ideal human Self, postmodern art is evocative of the deconstruction of the essential Self.