The Postmodern ORANUS: Carnival and Abjection in Victor Pelevin's "Homo Zapiens".

A relationship between Bakhtin's notions of carnival and Kristeva's theories of abjection has been suggested by a handful of previous scholars, however few have seriously explored the correlations between these two systems. I propose that carnival and abjection represent two sides of the same coin---the festive and horrific extremes of the self-same semiotic system of liminality that, in its original modern form, creates the transcendental signified. However, when placed in the postmodern condition, carnival and abjection not only lose their ability to reinsert and define the boundaries that shape our symbolic worlds, but become permanent features, and moreover their intrinsic interrelations are revealed.