Monsters Monstrosities And The Monstrous In Culture And Society

Author : Diego Compagna,Stefanie Steinhart
Publisher : Vernon Press
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2020-01-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781622738939

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Monsters, Monstrosities, and the Monstrous in Culture and Society by Diego Compagna,Stefanie Steinhart Pdf

Existing research on monsters acknowledges the deep impact monsters have especially on Politics, Gender, Life Sciences, Aesthetics and Philosophy. From Sigmund Freud’s essay ‘The Uncanny’ to Scott Poole’s ‘Monsters in America’, previous studies offer detailed insights about uncanny and immoral monsters. However, our anthology wants to overcome these restrictions by bringing together multidisciplinary authors with very different approaches to monsters and setting up variety and increasing diversification of thought as ‘guiding patterns’. Existing research hints that monsters are embedded in social and scientific exclusionary relationships but very seldom copes with them in detail. Erving Goffman’s doesn’t explicitly talk about monsters in his book ‘Stigma’, but his study is an exceptional case which shows that monsters are stigmatized by society because of their deviations from norms, but they can form groups with fellow monsters and develop techniques for handling their stigma. Our book is to be understood as a complement and a ‘further development’ of previous studies: The essays of our anthology pay attention to mechanisms of inequality and exclusion concerning specific historical and present monsters, based on their research materials within their specific frameworks, in order to ‘create’ engaging, constructive, critical and diverse approaches to monsters, even utopian visions of a future of societies shared by monsters. Our book proposes the usual view, that humans look in a horrified way at monsters, but adds that monsters can look in a critical and even likewise frightened way at the very societies which stigmatize them.

Author : Yeojin Kim,Shane Carreon
Publisher : Vernon Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2024-04-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781648898624

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Monsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability by Yeojin Kim,Shane Carreon Pdf

As monstrous bodies on-screen signal a wide range of subversive destabilization of the notions of identity and community, this anthology asks what meanings monsters and monstrosity convey in relation to our recent circumstances shaped by neoliberalism and the pandemic that have led to the intensified tightening of border controls by nation-states, the intensive categorization of (un)identifiable bodies, and subsequent forms of isolations and detachments imposed by social distancing and the rapid transition of sociality from reality to virtual reality. Presenting various thinkings along the lines of the body and its representations as cultural text, together with popular or recent media productions showing various bodies deemed to be monstrous as they either cross conventionally held borders or stay in liminal spaces such as between human-animal, human-machine, virtual bodies-corporeal flesh, living-death, and other permeable borders, this volume looks into the on-screen constructions of the monster and monstrosity not only as they represent notions of difference, perceived (non)belongings, and disruptions of traditional identity markers, but also as they either conceal various vulnerabilities or implicitly endorse violence towards the labeled Other.

Author : Chara Kokkiou,Angeliki Malakasioti
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2024-04-23
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781003845652

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Beauty and Monstrosity in Art and Culture by Chara Kokkiou,Angeliki Malakasioti Pdf

This edited volume takes a new look at an old question: what is the relationship between beauty and monstrosity? How has the notion of beauty transformed through the years and how does it coincide with monstrous ontologies? Contributors offer an interdisciplinary approach to how these two concepts are interlinked and emphasize the ways the beautiful and the monstrous pervade human experience. The two notions are explored through the axis of human transformation, focusing on body, identity, and gender, while questioning both how humans transform their body and space as well as how humans themselves are gradually transformed in different contexts. The pandemic, gender crisis, moral crisis, sociocultural instability, and environmental issues have redefined beauty and the relationship we have with it. Exploring these concepts through the lens of human transformation can yield valuable insights into what it means to be human in a world of constant change. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, archaeology, philosophy, architecture, and cultural studies.

Author : Rebecca Merkelbach
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2019-11-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781501514227

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Monsters in Society by Rebecca Merkelbach Pdf

Dragons, giants, and the monsters of learned discourse are rarely encountered in the Sagas of Icelanders, and therefore, the general teratological focus on physical monstrosity yields only limited results when applied to them. This, however, does not equal an absence of monstrosity – it only means that monstrosity is conceived of differently. This book shifts the view of monstrosity from the physical to the social, accounting for the unique social circumstances presented in the Íslendingasögur and demonstrating how closely interwoven the social and the monstrous are in this genre. Employing literary and cultural theory as well as anthropological and historical approaches, it reads the monsters of the Íslendingasögur in their literary and socio-cultural context, demonstrating that they are not distractions from feud and conflict, but that they are in fact an intrinsic part of the genre’s re-imagining of the past for the needs of the present.

Author : Mark Duffett,Jon Hackett
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2022-08-25
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781501374760

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Scary Monsters by Mark Duffett,Jon Hackett Pdf

Through a series of case studies, Scary Monsters examines masculinity in popular music culture from the perspective of research into monstrosity

Author : Verena Bernardi,Frank Jacob
Publisher : Vernon Press
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2019-10-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781622737949

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All Around Monstrous: Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts by Verena Bernardi,Frank Jacob Pdf

We know all kinds of monsters. Vampires who suck human blood, werewolves who harass tourists in London or Paris, zombies who long to feast on our brains, or Godzilla, who is famous in and outside of Japan for destroying whole cities at once. Regardless of their monstrosity, all of these creatures are figments of the human mind and as real as they may seem, monsters are and always have been constructed by human beings. In other words, they are imagined. How they are imagined, however, depends on many different aspects and changes throughout history. The present volume provides an insight into the construction of monstrosity in different kinds of media, including literature, film, and TV series. It will show how and by whom monsters are really created, how time changes the perception of monsters and what characterizes specific monstrosities in their specific historical contexts. The book will provide valuable insights for scholars in different fields, whose interest focuses on either media studies or history.

Author : Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 801 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2020-01-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781452960401

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The Monster Theory Reader by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock Pdf

A collection of scholarship on monsters and their meaning—across genres, disciplines, methodologies, and time—from foundational texts to the most recent contributions Zombies and vampires, banshees and basilisks, demons and wendigos, goblins, gorgons, golems, and ghosts. From the mythical monstrous races of the ancient world to the murderous cyborgs of our day, monsters have haunted the human imagination, giving shape to the fears and desires of their time. And as long as there have been monsters, there have been attempts to make sense of them, to explain where they come from and what they mean. This book collects the best of what contemporary scholars have to say on the subject, in the process creating a map of the monstrous across the vast and complex terrain of the human psyche. Editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock prepares the way with a genealogy of monster theory, traveling from the earliest explanations of monsters through psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and cultural studies, to the development of monster theory per se—and including Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s foundational essay “Monster Theory (Seven Theses),” reproduced here in its entirety. There follow sections devoted to the terminology and concepts used in talking about monstrosity; the relevance of race, religion, gender, class, sexuality, and physical appearance; the application of monster theory to contemporary cultural concerns such as ecology, religion, and terrorism; and finally the possibilities monsters present for envisioning a different future. Including the most interesting and important proponents of monster theory and its progenitors, from Sigmund Freud to Julia Kristeva to J. Halberstam, Donna Haraway, Barbara Creed, and Stephen T. Asma—as well as harder-to-find contributions such as Robin Wood’s and Masahiro Mori’s—this is the most extensive and comprehensive collection of scholarship on monsters and monstrosity across disciplines and methods ever to be assembled and will serve as an invaluable resource for students of the uncanny in all its guises. Contributors: Stephen T. Asma, Columbia College Chicago; Timothy K. Beal, Case Western Reserve U; Harry Benshoff, U of North Texas; Bettina Bildhauer, U of St. Andrews; Noel Carroll, The Graduate Center, CUNY; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Arizona State U; Barbara Creed, U of Melbourne; Michael Dylan Foster, UC Davis; Sigmund Freud; Elizabeth Grosz, Duke U; J. Halberstam, Columbia U; Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz; Julia Kristeva, Paris Diderot U; Anthony Lioi, The Julliard School; Patricia MacCormack, Anglia Ruskin U; Masahiro Mori; Annalee Newitz; Jasbir K. Puar, Rutgers U; Amit A. Rai, Queen Mary U of London; Margrit Shildrick, Stockholm U; Jon Stratton, U of South Australia; Erin Suzuki, UC San Diego; Robin Wood, York U; Alexa Wright, U of Westminster.

Author : Artwell Nhemachena,Munyaradzi Mawere
Publisher : African Books Collective
Page : 397 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2020-07-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789956551170

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Securitising Monstrous Bottoms in the Age of Posthuman Carnivalesque? by Artwell Nhemachena,Munyaradzi Mawere Pdf

Placing security studies in the context of contemporary discourses about the colonial comeback and posthumanism, this book postulates the notion of staticide which avers that the effacement of African state sovereignty is crucial for the security of the oncoming empire. Understood in the light of posthumanism, antihumanism, animism, postanthropocentrism and transhumanism; African human security has evidently been put on a recession course together with African state security. Much as African states are demonised as so failed, defective, corrupt, weak and rogue to require recolonisation; transhumanism also assumes that human bodies are so corrupt, imperfect, defective, failed, rogue and weak to require not only enhancements or augmentation but also to beckon recolonisation. Also, deemed to be ecologies, human bodies are set to be liberalised and democratised in the interest of nonhuman viruses, nanobots, microchips, bacteria, fungi and other pathogens living within the bodies. The book critically examines the security implications of theorising human bodies as ecologies for nonhuman entities. Reading staticide together with transhumanism, this book foresees transhumanist new eugenics that are accompanying the new empire in a supposedly Anthropocene world that serves to justify the sacrifice and disposability of some surplus humans living in the recesses and nether regions of the empire. Paying attention to the colonial comeback, the book urges African scholars not to mistake imperial transformation for decolonisation. The book is invaluable for scholars and activists in African studies, anthropology, decoloniality, sociology, politics, development studies, security studies, sociology and anthropology of science and technology studies, and environmental studies.

Author : Andrea S. Dauber
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Monsters in literature
ISBN : 9004374272

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Monsters in Society by Andrea S. Dauber Pdf

Author : Caterina Nirta,Andrea Pavoni
Publisher : Vernon Press
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2021-06-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781648892196

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Monstrous Ontologies: Politics Ethics Materiality by Caterina Nirta,Andrea Pavoni Pdf

While the presence of monsters in popular culture is ever-increasing, their use as an explicit or implicit category to frame, stigmatise, and demonise the other is seemingly on the rise. At the same time, academic interest for monsters is ever-growing. Usually, monstrosity is understood as a category that emerges to signal a transgression to a given order; this approach has led to the demystification of the insidious characterisations of the (racial, sexual, physical) other as monstrous. While this effort has been necessary, its collateral effects have reduced the monstrous to a mere (socio-cultural) construction of the other: a dialectical framing that de facto deprives monstrosity from any reality. 'Monstrous Ontologies: Politics, Ethics, Materiality' proffers the necessity of challenging these monstrous otherings and their perverse socio-political effects, whilst also asserting that the monstrous is not simply an epistemological construct, but that it has an ontological reality. There is a profound difference between monsters and monstrosity. While the former is an often sterile political and social simplification, the end-product of rhetorical and biopolitical apparatuses; the latter may be understood as a dimension that nurtures the un-definable, that is, that shows the limits of these apparatuses by embodying their material excess: not a 'cultural frame', but the limit to the very mechanism of 'framing'. The monstrous expresses the combining, hybridising, becoming, and creative potential of socio-natural life, albeit colouring this powerful vitalism with the dark hue of a fearful, disgusting, and ultimately indigestible reality that cannot simply be embraced with multicultural naivety. As such, it forces us towards radically changing not the categories, but the very mechanisms of categorisation through which reality is framed and acted upon. Here lies the profound ethical dimension that monstrosity forces us to acknowledge; here lies its profoundly political potential, one that cannot be unfolded by merely deconstructing monstrosity, and rather requires to engage with its uncomfortable, appalling, and revealing materiality. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, PostDocs, and academics alike in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, humanities, sociology and social theory, criminology, human geography, and critical legal theory.

Author : Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1996-11-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781452900551

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Monster theory [electronic resource] by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen Pdf

The contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition.

Author : Verena Bernardi,Frank Jacob
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2019-09-13
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1622738454

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All Around Monstrous by Verena Bernardi,Frank Jacob Pdf

We know all kinds of monsters. Vampires who suck human blood, werewolves who harass tourists in London or Paris, zombies who long to feast on our brains, or Godzilla, who is famous in and outside of Japan for destroying whole cities at once. Regardless of their monstrosity, all of these creatures are figments of the human mind and as real as they may seem, monsters are and always have been constructed by human beings. In other words, they are imagined. How they are imagined, however, depends on many different aspects and changes throughout history. The present volume provides an insight into the construction of monstrosity in different kinds of media, including literature, film, and TV series. It will show how and by whom monsters are really created, how time changes the perception of monsters and what characterizes specific monstrosities in their specific historical contexts. The book will provide valuable insights for scholars in different fields, whose interest focuses on either media studies or history.

Author : Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2023-10-20
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781478027454

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Law by Night by Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller Pdf

In Law by Night Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller asks what we can learn about modern law and its authority by understanding how it operates in the dark of night. He outlines how the social experience and cultural meanings of night promote racialized and gender violence, but also make possible freedom of movement for marginalized groups that might be otherwise unavailable during the day. Examining nighttime racial violence, curfews, gun ownership, the right to sleep, and “take back the night” rallies, Goldberg-Hiller demonstrates that liberal legal doctrine lacks a theory of the night that accounts for a nocturnal politics that has historically allowed violence to persist. By locating the law’s nocturnal limits, Goldberg-Hiller enriches understandings of how the law reinforces hierarchies of race and gender and foregrounds the night’s potential to enliven a more egalitarian social life.

Author : Kinga Gmiat
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 30 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2013-07-31
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9783656471844

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Monstrosity in Matheson's "I Am Legend" and Lawrence's Film Adaptation by Kinga Gmiat Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine" (American Studies), course: The Virus as Political Metaphor in 20th Century American Literature and Film, language: English, abstract: It is difficult to imagine our world without monsters. Their hideous appearance and scary behavior became integrated in our lives and culture. No culture can live without monsters. Children at an early age fear monsters under their beds and adolescents fight against monsters in computer games. We read about them in fictional literature and see them in classic movies as well as new publications. Monsters have always played an important role in culture. But what are monsters? How do they find their way into our society and where do they come from? Not only are they defined by their deterrent appearance but also by qualities ascribed by the culture they appear in (cf. Murgatroyd 2007, p. 2). The anthropologist Jeffrey Jerome Cohen deals with monsters and their role in society. In his work called “Monster Theory” he proposes a method of understanding cultures through the monsters they invent by giving seven theses explaining the monster ́s characterizations (cf. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome: Monster Culture (Seven Theses). In: Monster Theory. Reading Culture. Minneapolis 1996, p. 3f.). Cohen ́s second thesis “The Monster Always Escapes” will be of special interest to us. Also referring to Cohen ́s first thesis “The Monster ́s Body Is A Cultural Body” we will examine how monsters are born into society and how they keep on living within the frames of cultural, political and social relations. Afterwards we will apply Cohen ́s thesis to Richard Matheson ́s “I Am Legend”, a Science Fiction and horror novel, which deals with monsters in form of vampires. In Matheson ́s fictional work the protagonist Robert Neville, as the only human being, lives in a world of bloodthirsty vampires. Neville, trying to understand the germ which created the disease and to which he himself is immune, does scientific researches. He haunts the vampires and kills them, when ultimately he is captured by a pair of infected survivors. The novel is set in Los Angeles.

Author : Marina Levina,Diem-My T. Bui
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2013-05-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781441185372

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Monster Culture in the 21st Century by Marina Levina,Diem-My T. Bui Pdf

In the past decade, our rapidly changing world faced terrorism, global epidemics, economic and social strife, new communication technologies, immigration, and climate change to name a few. These fears and tensions reflect an evermore-interconnected global environment where increased mobility of people, technologies, and disease have produced great social, political, and economical uncertainty. The essays in this collection examine how monstrosity has been used to manage these rising fears and tensions. Analyzing popular films and televisions shows, such as True Blood, Twilight, Paranormal Activity, District 9, Battlestar Galactica, and Avatar, it argues that monstrous narratives of the past decade have become omnipresent specifically because they represent collective social anxieties over resisting and embracing change in the 21st century. The first comprehensive text that uses monstrosity not just as a metaphor for change, but rather a necessary condition through which change is lived and experienced in the 21st century, this approach introduces a different perspective toward the study of monstrosity in culture.