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.
Abject art replaces the object of desire and admiration with an undesirable object.
The abject is, perhaps, most poignantly represented in performance art, where human bodies are physicalized in the act of abjection. A prime example is Bob Flanagan - a performance artist who responded to the pain of cystic fibrosis by becoming a masochist. He made it evident that the body was not a site where the meaning of the self is manifested. This was certainly true of Flanagan, who not only lived a more invigorated life in spite of his illness, but it seems he was actually able to live longer because of his self-mutilation. Flanagan challenged his audience s conceptions of what a sick person should be by performing explicit sexuality.