Monster Theory

1996 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Monster Theory

Monsters: The Social-Unconscious Life of `Others' and a Note on the Origins of Group Therapy

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-300
Author(s):  
Martin Weegmann
Keyword(s):  
Group Theory ◽  
Group Therapy ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Monster Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Unconscious

Monsters are curious cultural products, at once indicative of human fears but equally characteristic of how humans envisage and construct preferred identities at a group level. Drawing on contemporary social and `monster theory', the article argues that the study of `the monstrous' is a fertile one for group analysts. Significantly, the late 19th century origins of group theory were linked to fears about monstrous forces at work in society, whilst contemporary `human monsters' continue to preoccupy the imagination.

Constructing Imperial and National Identities: Monstrous and Human Bodies in Book of Watchers, Daniel, and 2 Maccabees

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Anathea Portier-Young
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Political Body ◽  
Monster Theory ◽  
Body And Soul

Monster theory illuminates the construction of imperial and national identities in the portrayals of monstrous and human bodies in three early Jewish texts; Book of Watchers, Daniel, and 2 Maccabees. Book of Watchers expresses anxiety about Judean/Jewish identity in the shadow of empire through its portrayal of a vulnerable humanity terrorized by voracious giants and their demonic spirits. Daniel dehumanizes empire and its agents, imaging empire as a colossal statue, an animalistic were-king, and a series of monstrous beasts, while one like a human being poses an alternative to imperial rule. Second Maccabees, by contrast, demythologizes, decapitates, dismembers, and disintegrates the imperial body in order to portray the integral Judean political body (and soul) as mature, pure, capable, and ordered.

The Monstrosity of God Made Flesh

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 238-256
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Jobe
Keyword(s):  
Karl Barth ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Monster Theory ◽  
The Status

Abstract Three times over the course of thirty-eight years, Karl Barth images God as the monster Leviathan (once each in the Epistle to the Romans, Church Dogmatics II.1 and& IV.3.1). Barth’s imagination for God in monstrous form emerges from his interpretation of Romans 11:35, in which the apostle Paul quotes a line from Job 41:11, a poem about Leviathan, to describe the greatness of God. Using monster theory and a close reading of Barth, this article will discuss how God as Leviathan answers one of Barth’s primary questions—namely, how it is that Jesus saves human beings from their headlong rush into the abyss. Moving from Barth’s exegetical insights, through Barth’s soteriology, the article ends with the ethics of a God made monstrous flesh—an ethics that Barth explicitly links to the status of prisoners and all those depicted as monstrous and cast into the abyss.

Monstrous Women: Exploring Historical Witchcraft and It's Presence in The Witch

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Noah Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Monster Theory ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
The Witch ◽  
And Behavior

Accusations of witchcraft in America were often death sentences for women that society considered as acting outside of the norm; however, in Robert Eggers’s film, The Witch, embodying the role of a witch becomes a powerful tool in fighting Puritanical social expectations with magic, appearance, and behavior. Through the application of monster theory, historical contextualization, and feminist theory, this essay explores the implications of portraying the film’s main villain as a grotesque hag, the meaning behind its use of gory magic, why the protagonist chooses to become a witch herself, and finally, the consequences of othering marginalized groups from society.

(The promise of) Monstrous Kinship? Queer Reproduction and the Somatechnics of Sexual and Racial Difference

Somatechnics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-211
Author(s):  
Ulrika Dahl
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Donor Insemination ◽  
Monster Theory ◽  
Lgbtq Rights

This article considers the figure of the monster and monstrosity as a phenomenon as an entangled effect of kinship and reproduction, and thus as conveying specific understandings of gender, sexuality and race. While non-heterosexual reproduction and family-making has long been viewed as monstrous, increasing LGBTQ rights and recognition has instead insisted on its normality. Engaging with feminist and queer monster theory, and building on ethnographic research in Stockholm, Sweden, this article considers the monstrous remains within contemporary queer kinship. In particular, it proposes that when choice and intent rather than biological ‘facts’ constitute the foundation of (queer) family, sexual and racial difference does not cease to exist, but rather, re-emerges as monstrous attachments and embodiments. To sketch a larger argument about the potential limits of ideas about social construction, the article hones in on two examples. First, it shows that gestation and childbirth, as monstrous embodiments, can pose problems for families that insist on parental equality through the perceived sameness of shared intent. Secondly it proposes that in the context of Sweden, reproduction through donor-insemination is built on a cultural idea of white sperm as both neutral and desirable. These examples, the article suggest, point to some remaining irreconcilable dimensions embedded in the fantasy of queer kinship that, like monsters, haunt its queer normative forms. In closing, it argues for a reconsideration of hopeful monstrosities by considering both queer reproduction and the sexual and racial differences with which it inevitably engages can instead be understood as somatechnical, as kinship technologies that are inevitably entangled in the biopolitics of (queer) nation-making and its natrualised whiteness.

scholarly journals Mapping the Potentials of Monster Studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildikó Limpár
Keyword(s):  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
Monster Theory

Book review: Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, ed. The Monster Theory Reader. University of Minnesota Press, 2020. ix + 560 pages + 33 b&w photos. ISBN 978-1-5179-0525-5. $35.00. Pbk.

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