Monster Culture (Seven Theses)

Being chimaera: a monstrous identity for SoTL academics

“…Indeterminacy is not enough to form the monstrous identity; it is created by mixing across barriers, such as occurs in transspecies fertilisation. The concept of monstrosity dances on the borders between binary oppositions, resists rigid categorisation and challenges dominant paradigms (Cohen, 1996). In our experience as SoTL academics, we became monstrous because we were not tied to the disciplinary space, because we were 'other' to the professional roles often assigned to ALL educators; and because we were multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted and multi-vocal.…”

“…We turned to 'monstrous theory' (Cohen, 1996) because it resides in the fluid third-spaces (Bhabha, 1994;Whitchurch, 2008Whitchurch, , 2013) that relate to those who do not easily fit into an ordered system (Douglas, 1970) -those who live on the margins or the 'fault lines' (Locke, 2012, p. 268). To be monstrous is to transgress the boundaries of normality and to fuse multiple perspectives (Kristeva, 1982); to experience the indeterminate space between imagination and actuality (Winnicott, 1971); and even to become alien to the self (Gilmore, 2003, p. 189).…”

Essentialism and attribution of monstrosity in racist discourse: Right‐wing internet postings about Africans and Jews

“…cognitive statement about the being not belonging to any accepted category of things' where normal patterns of categorizations do not apply (Wagner et al, 2006). In a sense, 'the monster is the harbinger of a category crisis' (Cohen, 1996) and hybrids are rejected in a highly affective way and must be physically removed: As shown here, children with a mixed ethnic background are unanimously depicted in a very negative way. In three messages, extreme hostility is expressed using 'action words' such as a phrase indicating that the author feels like throwing up.…”

Pragmatic Potential of the Nomination of the Subject-Source of Fear (A Monstrosity) in Texts of Horror Discourse

“…The nomination phone people is synonymous to a monster as it bears double connotation by marking the SSF by the origin of transformation and by emphasizing the new means to perform transgression. Researchers of monster culture mention that the most frightening aspect of encountering a monster is not seeing it but turning into one (Cohen 2012). Modern notion of transgression has widened and now it includes the fear of new technologies or space, or the fear of progress that may result in the extinction of mankind: By using cell phones, which have become the dominant form of communication in our daily lives, you simultaneously turn the populace into your own conscript army -an army that's literally afraid of nothing, because it's insane -and you break down the infrastructure (King 2011, p. 116).…”

“…As researchers say, monsters explicate senses that reveal hidden social or religious problems. The ugliness of these problems and their consequences, as well as the person's fear, wishes, worries and fantasy, are visualized by the monster's body (Cohen 2012). This way of visualizing allows to draw a line between the norm and deviations because a monster is "A product of a multitude of morphogenesis (ranging from somatic to ethnic) that align themselves to imbue meaning to Us and Them behind every cultural mode of seeing, the monster of abjection resides in that marginal geography of the Exterior, beyond the limits of the Thinkable, a place that is doubly dangerous: simultaneously "exorbitant" and "quite close" (Cohen 2012, p. 17).…”