(EVENTHESES50

THECULTUREOFTHEMONSTERS )
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

ArielGómezPonce

Iamgoingtoproposehere,throughafirstforay,anintroductiontothisbookofcontent
monstrous and the model of a new modus legendi: a method to read cultures from the
monsters that you are engendering. By doing so, I am going to partially violate two of the sacred dictates.
of recent cultural studies: the compulsion for historical specificity and the insistence that
all knowledge (and hence all the cartographies of that knowledge) is local. Regarding the first,
I will only say that in today's cultural studies, history (perhaps disguised as 'culture')
it tends to be fetishized as a telos, as a final determinant of meaning; post of Man, post
Foucault, post-Hayden White, one must take into account that history is another text in a
procession of texts, and not a guarantor of any singular meaning. A movement far from the longue
duration and towards microeconomics (of capital or gender) is often associated with criticism
Foucauldian; since recent critiques have found that where Foucault was mistaken was
mainly in its details, in the specific aspects. However, its methodology - its
archaeology of ideas, its history of thought - continues to be, with good reason, the route
chosen to be investigated by the majority of current cultural criticism, whether one works with the
postmodern cyberculture or with the Middle Ages.
AndIwouldliketomakesomeclarifications.Weliveinanerathathassidelinedatheory.
unified, an era in which we realize that history (like 'individuality', the
"subjectivity", "gender" and "culture") is made up of a multitude of fragments, more than
for a total epistemological. Some fragments will be collected here and tied together
temporarily to form a loose network (or, better, a hybrid without assimilation, a body
monstrous). Better than arguing about a 'theory of teratology', I offer as an introduction to
the essays that follow a set of fragile postulates in the search for cultural moments
specific. I offer seven theses towards an understanding of cultures through monsters that
they produce.

THESIST
I:HEBODYOFTHEMONSTERISACULTURALBODY

Vampires,graveyard,death:insidethebodywherethepathdiverges,andwhenitrises.
From his grave, he will not know which way to go. Drive a stake into his heart: it will be driven into the ground of the
bifurcation, it will pursue that place that leads to many other places, that point of indecision. Decapitates

50
In COHEN, Jeffrey (1996). MonsterTheory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Translation for the
Critical reading of classical texts and their projection to the present.
 the body in such a way that, once headless, it will not be recognized as a subject, but only as a body
pure.
a,shtaplacirohpatm
esehtfonoi tcesretniehttaylnonrobsiretsm
neohT
certain cultural moments - of a time, a feeling, and a place51The body of the monster
it literally incorporates fear, desire, worry, and fantasy (soothing or incendiary), giving it
life and a surprising independence. The body of the monster is pure culture. A construct and a
projection, the monster exists only to be read: the monstrum, etymologically, is "that which"
reveals
monster means something other than itself: it is always a displacement, it always inhabits the
the gap that exists between the time of the turbulence that creates it and the moment in which it is received to
to be born again. These epistemological spaces between the bones of the monsters are the abyss
familiar with Derrida's différance: an uncertain genetic principle, the essence of vitality of
monster, the reason why it always gets up from the dissection table as if its secrets were
to be revealed and then disappears into the night.

THESISIT
:HEMONSTERALWAYSESCAPES

g ama d e h t wo n k l l i w eW
through the Tibetan snow, the bones of the giant scattered at the top of a mountain), but the
monster returns immaterial and fades to reappear somewhere else (Isn't the Yeti?
a wild medieval man? Who is the wild man if not the biblical and classical giant? No
It matters how many times King Arthur killed the ogre of Mount San Miguel, the monster will reappear in
another heroic chronicle, leaving the Middle Ages an abundance of morte d'Arthur. It doesn't matter
how many times the besieged Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) destroyed the ambiguous Alien that
it was chasing her, its monstrous offspring returns, ready to chase her in a sequel more successful than
never. The fear that condenses like green vapor in the shape of the vampire can disperse.
temporarily, but the ultimate revenant returns. And thus the body of the monster is both
corporeal as incorporeal, its threat is its inclination to change.
Thegravealwaysopensandtherestlesssleeperadvancesonceagain('comesfromdeath,/comesto
tell you everything"), the proclaimed message is transformed by the air that gives its speaker a new
Life. The monsters must be examined within the intricate matrix of relationships (social,
cultural and historical-literary) that generate them. When talking about the new type of vampire invented
For Bram Stoker, we can explore the transgressive yet irresistible sexuality of the foreign count.
so subtly seductive for Jonathan Harker as it was for Stoker52Henry Irving, a mentor. O
we can analyze the hate-filled appropriation of the same demon that Murnau performed in Nosferatu,
where, facing the rising fascism, the recurrence of desire emerged in plagues and corruptions of the body.
AnneRicegavethemythamodernrewriteinwhichhomosexualityandvampirismhave

51
Literally, Zeitgeist (in German): Spirit of the Time, the spirit that mysteriously incorporates a 'place' that is a series of places, the
crossroads,whichisapointinamovementtowardsanuncertainplace.BurytheZeitgeistatacrossroads:itisconfused.
While I keep awake, no air on any side crosses everywhere; all paths lead to the monster.
52
IrealizethatthisisainterpretativebiographicalmaneuverthatBarthwouldcertainlyhavecalled'thelivingdeathoftheauthor'.
 they have been unified, apotheosized; that in this process she has created a phenomenon of pop culture
it is not insignificant, especially at a time when gender as a construct had been
scrutinized in almost all social records. In the recent box office success of Francis Coppola, Dracula of
Bram Stoker, the homosexual subtext present at least since the appearance of the lesbian lamia of
Sheridan Le Fanu (Carmilla, 1872), mainly involves, like the red blood cells that serve as
leitmotif for the film, an awakening about AIDS that transforms the disease of
vampirism as a form of sadistic salvation (and very medieval) through the torment of the body in
suffering. It is no coincidence that Coppola released a documentary about AIDS at the same
time I was working on Dracula.
m
neragderet layl thgi lsninruterdaednueht,seirotserm
iapvesehtfohcaenI
different, at each opportunity to be read against the grain of social movements or events
specific and determining: decadence and its new possibilities, homophobia and its hatred
imperative, the acceptance of new subjectivities not fixed in gender binarism, activism
paternalistic of a social fin de siècle. The discourse that extracts the transcultural and transtemporal phenomenon
called "the vampire" is of rather limited utility; even if the vampiric figures are
they are found in almost every part of the world, from Ancient Egypt to modern Hollywood, each
reappearance and its respective analysis is limited to a double act of construction and reconstruction. A
theory of the monster
by a logic that always threatens to transform; invigorated by change and escape, by the
the impossibility of achieving what Susan Stewart calls the desire to 'fall or die, the interruption' of a
gigantic topic53the monstrous interpretation is more an epiphany than a process, a work that
it must be done with fragments (traces, bones, talismans, teeth, shadows, flashes - signifiers
of a monstrous passage that positions itself in the monstrous body itself.

THESISIT
:HEMONSTERISAHARbINGEROFTHECRISISCATEGORY

gniyfirrohehttuA
ob.noi tazirogetaycnastcejert iesuacebsepacsesyw
alaretm
seT
nho
creature that Ridley Scott brought to life in Alien, writes Harvey Greenberg:

,velvaom
cngbieion,iutvolew
aofsllaurtnallngangiellhacm
,eghtraniaeL
aisitI
crustacean, reptile and humanoid. Able to remain inactive within its
egg indefinitely. It sheds its skin like a snake, from its shell like
an arthropod. Like a wasp, it lays its offspring inside another species... Responds to
according to Lamarckian and Darwinian principles.

Thisrejectionofparticipatinginaclassificatory"orderofthings"isarealityforthe
generality of monsters: they are disturbing hybrids whose bodies are externally incoherent

53
Elgigante is represented through movement, through its existence in time. Even in the description of the motionless landscape, it is its
activities, their actions, those that have results in the observation of gender. In contrast to the perfect and motionless universe of the
Miniatures,thegiantrepresentstheorderandthedisorderofhistoricalforces."SusanStewart,OnLonging:NarrativesoftheMiniature
the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).
 they resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuring. And for this reason, the monster is
dangerous, it is a form suspended between forms that threatens to destroy the distinctions.
Due to its ontological limitation, the monster notably appears in times of crisis as
a type of third term that problematizes the clash of extremes - such as 'that which questions the
binary thinking and introduces a crisis54This power to evade and undermine has taken course to
through the blood of the monster since classical times when. Despite the attempts of Aristotle
(and then Pliny, Augustine, and Isidore) to incorporate the monstrous races55within a system
coherent epistemological, the monster always escaped to return to its domains in the
margins of the world (a purely conceptual locus rather than geographic). The classic 'books of
"Wonders" radically undermined the Aristotelian taxonomic system as they rejected a
compartmentalization of its monstrous contents demand reconsidering the borders and the
normality. The laws of nature defined as a set determined by science are
joyfully violated in the unpredictable compilation that is the monstrous body. As a category
hybrid, the monster resists any classification built on hierarchies or simply
binary oppositions, demanding instead a 'system' that allows for polyphony, the response
mixed (the difference in equality, the repulsion in attraction) and the resistance to integration -
giving rise to what Hogle has called, with a wonderful play on words, 'a deep game of
differences, a non-binary polymorphism at the 'base' of human nature.
icehtfoyradnuobelbisivasadenim
gaiebtm
susevi lretm
sneohthcw
inhinoziroheT
h
the same hermeneutical: the monster offers an escape from its hermetic pattern, an invitation to explore
new spirals, new and interconnected methods to perceive the world56In the face of
monster, scientific research and its rational order collapses. The monster is a very
too big to be encapsulated in any conceptual system; the entire existence of the monster is a
challenge to the limit and the closure; like the giants of Mandeville's journey, it threatens to devour everything
law and eliminate anyone who thinks otherwise. The monster is, in this way, the personification
of the famous phenomenon that Derrida has called the 'supplement' (ce dangereux supplément): it makes
pieces the bifurcation, it is a syllogistic logic with a type of reasoning that approaches what
Barbara Johnson has called it 'a revolution in the very logic of meaning.'

54
MarjorieGarber,VestedInterests:Cross-DressingandCulturalAnxiety(NewYork:Routledge,1992).Garberwritesquiteabitabout
thec'risiscategory,'whichdefinesitasa' failureindefinitionaldistinction,aboundarythatbecomespermeable,alowingforthecrossingof
acategory(apparentlydifferent)fromanother:white/black,Jew/Christian,noble/bourgeois,master/slave..[Thisthatcrossestheboundaries,justlike
the transgender always functions as a mechanism of overdetermination - a mechanism of displacement from a diffuse front to another.
analogy, we can call it a 'tagged' gene that reveals the genetic chain, indicating in another way a condition
hidden.Itisnotthegeniusinitself,butitspresencethatdenotesaturbulentplace,indicatingthepossibilityofacrisissomewhere,in
some moment". It should be noted, however, that while Garber insists that the transvestite must be read through more than just the monster
Itcanonlybereadthrough-forthemonster,pureculture,thereisnothingelsebutitself.
55
These are ancient monsters first recorded by the Greek writer Ctesias and Megasthenes, and they include wild imaginary beings such
likethepygmies,thesciapodes(menwithalongfootwithwhichtheycouldjumpattremendousspeedorcouldreclinetheirbodies
likeakindofumbrela),theblemye("menwhoseheads/grewontheirshoulders,"inthewordsofOthelo),andthecynocephali,
ferociousmenwithheadsofdogswhowerecannibals.JohnBlockFriedmanhascalledthesecreaturesplinianraces,aftertheclassic
Encyclopedist that was granted to the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age. The monstrous races in medieval art and thought.
(Cambridge: Haverdad University Press, 1981).
56
The hermeneutic circle does not allow access or escape to an uninterrupted reality, but we must (we should not) continue with
"the same pattern." Barbara Smith, "Belief and Resistance: Asymmetrical account", Critical Inquiry 18.
 Fullofchallengestotraditionalmethodsoforganizingknowledgeandexperience
human, the geography of the monster is a perilous expansion and, therefore, always a rejection of
cultural space.

THESISIV:THEMONSTERLIESINTHEDOORSOFDIFFERENCE

noi tcnufst inI.sum

gnaol lw
doem
otecsaht i,hselfem
deacnereffidehtsiretm
senT
ho
as Another dialectical or supplementary term third, the monster is an incorporation of the
External, what is beyond -of all these loci that are rhetorically located as distant and
different but originated within. Any type of otherness can be inscribed (constructed) through
of the monstrous body, but most of the monstrous differences tend to be cultural,
political, racial, economic, and sexual.
eref f idl arut lucfonoi t areggaxeehT
known. The most famous distortion is in the Bible, where the aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan were
imagined as threatening giants and thus justifying the Hebrew colonization of the land
Promised (Numbers, 13). Representing an ancient culture as monstrous justifies its
displacement or extermination through the interpretation of a heroic act. In France
medieval, the epic songs celebrated the Crusades through the transformation of the
Muslims as demonic creatures whose threatening lack of humanity was read from their
beastly attributes; for culturally interpreting the 'Saracens' as 'monsters', the
propagandists rhetorically made the annexation of the East to the West acceptable. This project
representational was part of a complete dictionary of strategic repetitions in which the
"monstra" transformed into meanings of the feminine and the hypermasculine.
Arecentacritel fromaYugosalvnewspaperremnidsushowpersietntthesecanbe.
mythological divisions, and how long these divorces can persist at the foundation of any reality
historical:

A Serbian-Bosnian soldier, who was heading to Sarajevo, tells a reporter with complete seriousness
that Muslims feed Serbian children to the animals in the zoo.
History is a nonsense. There are no animals that have survived in the zoo.
Sarajevo. But the military is convinced and remembers all the mistakes that the
Muslims could or could not have perpetrated during their 500 years of rule.

ehdtnasegavasetulosbasdaeyartroperw
senaciA
em
vrei tN
a,setadtSetU
eihnntI
The powerful political machine of Manifest Destiny was able to push them westward with indifference.
Scattered throughout Europe due to the diaspora and tenaciously rejecting their assimilation to the
Christian society, the Jews have been the favorites for xenophobic distortions, because they were
a foreign culture living, working and often even thriving within devastation
communities that tried to become homogeneous and monolithic. The Middle Ages accused the Jews of
numerous crimes from bringing plagues to bleeding Christian children to prepare their flesh
Pascual. Nazi Germany simply brought these ancient traditions of hatred to its cause, inventing
a FinalSolution that differs from persecutions only in its technological efficiency.
 f id l ac igoloedi ro l ac i t i lopehT
a micro level as a cultural alterity in the macrocosm. A political figure who suddenly falls
in misfortune is transformed into an involuntary participant in a scientific experiment by the
historians appointed by the replacing regime: the 'monstrous history' is full of
unforeseen events, of Ovidian metamorphoses, from Vlad Tepes to Ronald Reagan. The most illustrious
The demon of this propagandistic variety is the English king Richard III, whom Thomas More described.
wonderfully like "small in stature, hunchbacked, with his left shoulder higher than the
right, with harsh features... came into the world with both feet twisted... "From birth,
Moro declared, Ricardo was a monster, "his deformed body is a readable text" in which it was inscribed
its perverted morals (indistinguishable from an incorrect political orientation).
ehottecnassianR
ehntil igrV
erodym
oloP
rf,odracnR
oitniopretnuocevissesbotm
solaeT
h
Anonymous Friends of Richard III in our time demonstrates the process of a "monster theory".
in all its splendor: culture gives birth to monsters before our eyes, redrawing the
normality provided by Ricardo who once lived, lifting his shoulder to deform
simultaneously to people, to cultural responses and to possibilities of objectivity.
history itself becomes a monster: extracting traits, auto-deconstructive, always in danger of
expose the sutures that tie their disparate elements, in an unnatural body. At the same time
Ricardo moved between the Monster and the Man, the alarming suggestion raises that this body
Incoherent, denatured, and always at risk of disintegration, it may be ours.
nopsearsekovorpsei t i tnedirednegniniatsudsnganidl iubfotcejorpt luciffiedT
h
worrisome throughout the culture, producing another impetus for teratogenesis. The woman who exceeds
the limits of her gender role risks becoming a Scylla, a witch, Lilith ("the first
Eva / the first Eva, "the obscure mother / the dark mother"57Bertha Mason or a Gorgon58The
Sexual identity 'deviated' is, in a similar way, susceptible to monsterization. The great
Medieval encyclopedist Vincent de Beauvais describes in his Speculum naturale the visit of a cynocephalus.
hermaphrodite at the French court (31.126). It was said that its male reproductive organ was
disproportionately long, but the monster could use any sex of its choice. BrunoRoy
it said about this fantastic hybrid: "What warning was coming to bring to the king? It came to be a witness of
the sexual norms. It personified the punishment that was earned by those who violated the taboos.
"sexual". This strange creature, a compound of the categories "male" and "female".
theoretically distinct, comes before King Louis to impose heterosexuality over the
homosexuality, with its supposed inversions and transformations ("Equa fit equus", declared a
Latin writer: "The horse becomes a mare." The strange monster with a dog's head is a
living excoriation of ambiguity and sexual abnormality, just like the cultural moments of
Vincentisdefinedasanembodiedheteronormalization.

57
I am indicating here the possibility of a feminist recovery of the monstrous gender by citing two titles of famous works about Lilith:
aJ fo rehtM
o kraD ehT , ro ,ht i l iL
Hurwitz.
58
The monstrous woman, who threatens to replace her angelic sister, represents unwavering female autonomy and, of this
mode, represents both the author's power to alleviate 'his' concerns by naming his sources with evil names (witch, bitch,
demon, monster) as, simultaneously, the mysterious power of the character that refuses to remain in its 'literally' ordered 'place'
Andso,itgeneratesastorythate' scapes'fromtheauthor."SandraM.GilbertandSusanGubar,TheMadwomanintheAttic:TheWomanWriterand
The nineteenth century literary imagination (NewHacen, Coon: Yale University Press, 1984).
 Fromtheclassicalperiodtothetwentiethcentury,racehasbeensuchapowerfulcatalystforthe
the creation of monsters as it has been in culture, gender, and sexuality. Africa soon became the
another significant for the West, the sign of its ontological difference only by its skin color.
AcondrgiothetGerkmhytofPhaeotnh,etnhaisntboifhetunaicterandunknownE
ohapitwer
blacks because they had burned by passing too close to the sun. The Roman naturalist Pliny claimed
that non-white skin was a symptom of a complete difference in temperament and was attributed to
darkness to the climate of Africa; the intense heat, he said, had burned the skin of the Africans and had
malformed their bodies (Natural History, 2,800). These differences were quickly moralized to
through a persuasive rhetoric of deviation. Paulino de Nola, a wealthy landowner who became
The preacher of the church explained that the Ethiopians had burned more for their sins and vices.
that by the sun, and the anonymous commentator of the Eclogue of Theodulus states succinctly the
meaning of the term Ethyopium: "Ethiopians, this is sinners. In fact, sinners can be
compared to the Ethiopians, black men who present a terrifying appearance to those
that contemplate them." The dark skin was associated with the fires of hell, and this means a
demonic origin for Christian mythology. Generally, perversion and sexual appetite
exaggerated were quickly associated with the Ethiopians; this connection was reinforced by violence
xenophobia according to which people with dark skin were forcibly imported during the Renaissance in Europe.
Thenarrativesaboutmestizajeemergedandcirculatedtoforgeofficialpoliciesofexclusion;the
Queen Isabel is famous for her concern for the 'blackamoores' and her supposed fear of the 'increase.
of the people of his nation.
Through all these monsters, the borders between personal and national bodies are
They erase. To complicate this confusing category even further, a type of otherness is often written as
another, since the national difference (for example) is transformed into a sexual difference. Giraldus
CambresisdemonstratedthisdeclineofforeignersinhisTopographyofIreland;whenhewritesabout
the Irishman (only to provide information to the curious English court, but actually as a first
step towards the invasion and colonization of the island), observes:

.ntagnorm
eicaora,secnviunkisecara,ecangritgusydirvedaneisitI
than any other nation on the principles of faith. These people who have clothing
so different from others, and so opposite to them, they create signs using their hands or their
head, they gesture when they want you to leave and shake their head backward when
they want to get rid of you. Likewise, in this nation, men pass the water.
sitting while the women do it standing. Furthermore, the women, as they also
The men ride with their legs on either side of the horse.

Aytpeofinvesm
t entbecomesanohterasGriadlusdecpihersnihteaplhabetofIrsihcuutlre.
anditreadsbackwards,againstthenormofEnglishmasculinity.Giralduscreatesthevisionofagender
monstrous (aberrant, demonstrative): the violation of the cultural codes that validate
generic behaviors create a rupture that must be cemented with (in this case) the
unification, with the corrective mortar of English normality. A bloody war of
subjugation followed immediately after the publication of this text, which remained potent
throughout the High Middle Ages and, in some way, continues to this day.
 Through a similar discursive process, the East becomes feminine and Africa, black. A type
difference becomes another while the normative categories of gender, sexuality, identity
nationality and ethnicity slide together like the intertwined circles of the Venn diagram, abjected
from the center that becomes a monster. This violent solution establishes a self-validation,
Hegelian dialectic master/slave that naturalizes the subjugation of one cultural body by another to
register it as excluded from personality and agency in all its forms. A polysemy is assumed already.
that the threat can be decoded; the multiplicity of meanings, paradoxically, repeats the
same restriction, propagandistic representations that carry reduced significance. But
a danger lies in this multiplication: just as two heads sprout from the hydra where one has been cut off.
cut off, from the difference arise the possibilities of escape, resistance, and alteration with more strength.
RenéGirardhaswrittenabouttherealviolencethatthesecorruptrepresentationspromote,
connecting the monsterized description with the phenomenon of the scapegoat. Monsters never
they are created ex nihilo, but through a process of fragmentation and recombination in which the
elements are extracted 'in various ways' (including -especially- marginal social groups)
and then assembled like the monster, "who can then claim an identity
independent." The political-cultural monster, the personification of radical difference, threatens
paradoxically by erasing the difference in the world of its creators, by proving

the potential for the system to differ from its own difference; in other words, not to be
different from the whole, to stop being a system. The difference that exists outside the system is
terrifying because it reveals the truth of this, its relativity, its fragility, and its mortality...
Despite what is commonly said, pursuers are never obsessed with
the difference only with its unpronounceable opposite, the lack of difference.

retem
shnot, laitnessneahetem
rolbam
otd,unadrnyarartibraseicnereffiedhttahgtnilaevR
e
threatens to destroy not only the individual members of a society but the entire apparatus
culture where this individuality is constituted and allowed. Because it is a body whose difference
has been written repeatedly, the monster (like the creature from Frankenstein, which combines curious
from a community of corpses, stitched somatic pieces) seeks its author, demanding his reason for
to be - and testify to the fact that it could have been built differently. Godzilla stomped
Tokyo;Girardfreeshimtheretofragmentthedelicatematrixoftherelationalsystemthatconnectseverything.
private body with the public world.

THESS
IV
T
:HEMONSTERGUARDSTHEBORDERSOFTHEPOSSB
ILE

hcseht fotenlacigom
loetsipeehtnierutpacstsiserretsm
noehT
Bajtinian ally of the popular. From its position at the limits of knowledge, the monster is situated
as a warning against the exploration of their uncertain domain. The giants of the
Patagonia, the dragons of the East, and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park declare together that curiosity
is often punished more than rewarded, that one is safer and contained within the
own domestic sphere that is outside, away from the watchful eyes of the state. The monster hinders the
mobility (intellectual, geographical, and sexual), delimiting the social spaces through which the
 Private bodies move. Taking a step outside of this official geography is risking being attacked.
for some monsters that patrol the border or (even worse) to become one of them.
Lycaon,thefirstwerewolfinWesternliterature,suffershislupinemetamorphosislikethe
culmination of a fable of hospitality59Ovid relates how the primordial giants atempt
submerging the world in anarchy by taking the Olympus from the gods, only to then be
destroyed by divine lightning. From its scattering of blood, a race of men arose.
who continued with the evil fate of their parents. Among this wicked progeny was Lycaon,
King of Arcadia. When Jupiter arrived as a guest at his house, Lycaon attempted to kill the sovereign of the
gods while he slept and, the next day, served him pieces of a servant's body for dinner.
enraged Jupiter punished this violation of the guest/host relationship by transforming him into the
monstrous appearance of that lack of laws, an impious state whose actions would drag it back
humanity

Terrified,heescapedand,uponreachingthesilentplain,hebegantohowlinvain.
he tried to speak; his mouth concentrates the rage that he carries inside himself and uses his
disordered passion of slaughter with the livestock and still rejoices in that blood. Her dresses
they transform into fur, their arms into legs, as they become a wolf, although they retain
features of its ancient form60.

inm
auhfossol gni t ani csafylbi r roH
the body of the king becomes all transparent, instantaneously and insistently readable. The power of the
narrative prohibition reaches its peak in the persistent description of the Licaón
monstrously composed, in that it is both beast and man, dual natures
in a defenseless tumult of assertion. The fable concludes when Licaón can no longer speak, but
just mean.
While the monsters born from political convenience and self-justified nationalism
they function as a lively invitation to action, usually military (invasions, usurpations,
colonizations), the monster of prohibition watches the edges of the possible, intercepting through
your grotesque body some behaviors and actions, and canceling others. It is possible, for example,
that medieval merchants intentionally disseminated maps describing serpents
marinas (like the Leviathan) at the edges of their trade routes to discourage future explorations
and establish monopolies. In this way, every monster is a double narrative, two living stories:
one that describes what the monster comes to be and another, its testimony, detailing what cultural use
The monster of prohibition delineates the borders that support that system of relationships that

59
Both inAntiquity and in the medieval period, extensive journeys depended on the promulgation of an ideal of
hospitality that sanctified the host's responsibility towards their guest. The violation of this code is the
responsible for the destruction of biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, for the transformation into a man of the giant in Sir Gawain and
CarlofCarlisle,andofthefirstpunitivetransformationinTheMetamorphosesofOvid.Thistypeofpopularnarratives
they represented a fable of hospitality, such stories included a practice whose non-compliance was illustrated in
through a drama that rejects dangerous behavior. Valorization is achieved in one of two possible ways: the
the host is already a monster and learns the lesson from their guest, or the host becomes a monster in the course
From the narrative, the audience members realize how they should conduct themselves. In both cases, the mantle of
Monstrosity draws attention to those behaviors and attitudes that the text aims to prohibit.
60
Ovid, The Metamorphoses. Barcelona: Editorial Juventud, 2002.
 we call culture, to horribly draw attention to those edges that cannot - must not -
to be crossed.
Firstofall,bordersexisttocontrolthemovementofwomenor,morespecifically,
general, to establish strictly homosocial borders, the links of the man who maintains
a functional patriarchal society. As a type of caregiver, this monster delimits social space
through which cultural bodies can move and, in the classical era (for example), validate
a hermeticism, a hierarchical system of naturalized and controlled mandate where every man
it had a functional place. In Western culture, the prototype for this type of monster
"geográficos" is the Polyphemus of Homer. Like the quintessence of the xenophobic interpretation of
foreigner (the barbarian - the one who is unintelligible within a given linguistic-cultural system), the
cyclopes are represented as savages who have no 'law to bless them' and who reject the
techne (in the Greek style) that produces civilization. Its archaism is demonstrated through its lack of
hierarchies and a policy that precedes them. This dissociation from the community leads to individualism
scary that, in Homeric terms, can only be horrifying. Because they live without a system of
tradition and culture, the cyclopes are a danger to the newly arrived Greeks, men whose
identities are subordinate to a compartmentalized function within a system
deindividualized from subordination and control. The victims of Polyphemus are devoured, swallowed,
out of public view: it is cannibalism as incorporation within a flawed cultural body.
eht foyteicoseht ' sl lact luacuoFtw
ahfoyl lalufrw
oepasi retm
snoeT
h
polymorphic behaviors are, in fact, extracted from people's bodies and their pleasures...
to be prolonged, revealed, isolated, intensified, incorporated by multiple devices of
control." Susan Stewart observed that "the sexuality of the monster takes on a life of its own"; Foucault tells us

help to see why. The monster personifies those sexual practices that should not be committed, or
that which must be committed only through the body of the monster. She and they!: the monster imposes
the cultural codes that regulate sexual desire.
Anyonewhoknowsthelow-budgetsciencefictionmoviesthatwerefashionablein
1950 will relate the previous statement to two magnificent films of the genre, one about a very
masculine and radioactive heroine from outer space who annihilates every man she touches, and the other who
it is a social parable in which giant ants (actually communists) dig underneath
Angels(whichwouldbeHollywood)andthreatenworldpeace(thatis,Americanconservatism).
Iconnectthesetwotitlesthatseemunrelatedtodrawattentiontothe
concerns that monsterize their subjects, first of all, and syntactically promulgate a
greater fear: that the two will unite in some sinful mixture. We have seen that the
monsters arise in the gap where difference is perceived as a leap in the recording of the
voice of its captured subject; the criterion for this division is arbitrary, and it can range from anatomy of the
skin color to religious beliefs, clothing, and political ideology. The destructiveness of
the monster is actually a deconstructibility: it threatens to reveal that difference originates in the
process more than in the fact (and this 'fact' is subject to constant reconstructions and changes).
Since those who record the history of the West have been primarily European and male,
women (she) and non-whites (they!) have repeatedly found themselves transformed
in monsters, either to paravalidate a specific alienation of masculinity or whiteness, or
 simply to be set apart from their field of thought61.The other feminine and cultural ones are
sufficiently monstrous in themselves in a patriarchal society, but when they threaten with
the entire economy of desire is attacked.
Asavehicleofprohibition,themonsteroftenarisestoimposethelawsofthe
exogamy, both with the taboo of incest (which establishes the trade of women by demanding that
they establish marriages outside their family) and decree against interracial sexual miscegenation
(which limits the parameters of said traffic by controlling the borders of culture, usually to
service of some notion of group 'purity'. The narratives of incest are very common throughout
tradition and have been widely documented, mainly due to the elevation of the taboo to the
foundational basis of patriarchal society. Mestizaje, as the intersection of misogyny (the
concern about gender) and racism (no matter how naive), has received attention
considerably lesser criticism. I am going to say a few words about this.
vidfoecruosyrm
ai rpehtneebgnol sahelbiBehT
interracial mixing. One of these pronouncements is the divine mandate of God that comes from the mouth
from the prophet Joshua (Joshua 23:12ff); another is a cryptic episode from Genesis that has been worked on quite a bit

during the medieval period and referring to the 'children of God' who beget 'the daughters of the
"man" with a race of evil giants (Genesis 6:4). The monsters are here, as in
any place, scattering representations of other cultures, generalized and demonized, to
impose a strict notion of group uniformity. The fears of contamination, impurity and
the loss of identity caused by stories like those in the episode of Genesis is strong and
reappear incessantly. Shakespeare's Caliban, for example, is the product of such a mixture,
"spotted puppy" of the Algerian witch Sícorax and the demon. Charlotte Brontë inverted the paradigm
usual in Jane Eyre (the white Rochester and the Jamaican lunatic Bertha Mason), but the movies of
terror in seemingly innocent appearances (like King Kong) reveals, through a brutal scene, a
concern about miscegenation. Even a film as recent as the incredibly successful Aliende
1979 may have a background recognition of fear: and its aftermath, the grotesque creature
what looms over the heroine (dressed only in her underwear in the final scene) drips from her teeth
a shiny blob of Johnson & Johnson lubricant, the tendons of the jaw are made of
dry condoms and the man inside the rubber suit is Bolaji Badejo, a member of the Maasai tribe
who was over two meters tall and was conveniently studying in England when he was elected
the cast of the movie.
ThenarrativesoftheWestrepresentthestrangestdancesinwhichmiscegenationandits
practitioners have been condemned to the pyre. Among the flames we see the old women of Salem.
hung, accused of having sexual relations with the devil; we suspect they died

61
Thesituationwasobviouslymuchmorecomplexthanthesesimplestatementscanshow:"Europeans",by
example, usually only includes male men of the Latin Western tradition. Sexual orientation complicates
much more this panorama, as we can see.
Donna Haraway, following Trinh Minh-ha, refers to humans who are beneath the monstrous skin as "others".
Being inappropriate does not mean 'not being related to' - that is, being in a special reservation, it
untouchable with the status of authentic in the allotropic and alochronic condition of innocence. More than being found in a criticism
relationally reconstructive, in a diffraction rather than in a rational reflection, means the realization of powerful
connections that exceed domination. 'The Promises of Monsters' in Cyborgs, and Women: the reinvention of nature
(NewCork: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).
 because they crossed the border of difference, that which prohibits women from owning property and
to live in solitude and without control. The flames devour the Jews of 13th-century England, who were stealing
children from respected families and they cooked matzos with their blood; as a threat to survival
of the English race and culture were expelled from the country and their properties were confiscated. Again,
a competent narrative involves a monstrous economy - the Jews were the lenders; the
the state and its businesses were too indebted to them - but this second story is
plunges into a horrifying fable of cultural plurality and threatens the continuity of the
Christianity. While the American frontier expanded under the banner of Manifest Destiny in the
In the 19th century, stories circulated about how 'Indians' kidnapped white women daily to
provide yourself with handcuffs; the West was a dangerous place waiting to be turned into farms, its
threatening native inhabitants were only to be dispossessed. It little matters that the
the protagonist of Native Son by Richard Wright will not violate and kill his employer's daughter; that
narration is provided by the watchmen, by a furious white society (in fact, by history
western same). In the novel, as in life, the threat appears when a non-white leaves the
reservation, abandoning it; Wright imagines what happens when the horizons of expectation
narratives are firmly established, and their conclusion (which originates in seventeenth century Salem, in
medieval England and in nineteenth century America) is that the real circumstances of the
Stories tend to fade away when a narrative about miscegenation is provided.
rfnina,ci toreylesrevrep, lauxesot ,evissergsnartsiretm
sneoT
h
monster and all its personifications must be exiled or destroyed. The repressed, without
embargo, like Freud himself, always seems to return.

THESISVIT
:HEFEAROFTHEMONSTERISACTUALLYATYPEOFDESIRE

nedibrofehtfoseci tcarpehthtw
dietaicossayl tnatsnocsiretm
sneoT
h
to impose. But the monster also attracts. The same creatures that terrorize and prohibit can
ignite powerful escapist fantasies; the connection of monstrosity with the forbidden makes
a monster of the most attractive kind for a temporary escape from restrictions. This repulsion and attraction
simultaneous in the core of the monstrous composition explains very well its continuous popularity
cultural, due to the fact that the monster can rarely be contained in a simple dialectic and
binary (thesis, antithesis. no synthesis). We distrust and detest monsters while at the same time
we envy their freedom and, perhaps, their sublime despair.
Through the body of the monster, fantasies of aggression, domination, and inversion allow
safe expressions in a clearly defined space and in permanent pre-limitations. The pleasure
the escapist pushes away horror only when the monster threatens to cross those boundaries, destroy or
rebuild the fine walls of category and culture. When contained by marginalizations
geographical, generic, or epistemic, the monster can function as an alter ego, as a
protection that allows an Other. The monster awakens only by the pleasures of the body, to the simple
and fleeting happiness of being frightened or of fear itself - of the experience of mortality and corporality.
Wewatchthemonstrousspectacleofhorrormoviesbecauseweknowthatcinemaisaspace
temporal, that after the impact of the sensuality of the celluloid images we re-enter the world of
 the light and comfort62Likewise, the history that is on a page in front of us can terrify us.
(whether it appears in the new section of the New York Times or in the latest novel by Stephen King),
as long as we are safe knowing that they are about to finish (the number of pages in our
my left hand is decreasing) and close to freeing us. Audibly, the work of the
narratives are no different; it doesn't matter how disturbing the description of the giant is, it doesn't matter
how many unbaptized children and unfortunate knights did I devour, King Arthur will end up destroying it.
krowernegehtwohswonkecne iduaehT
Thetimesofcarnivaltemporarilymarginthemonstersbut,atthesametime,they
they allow a safe world of expression and play: on Halloween, everyone is demons for a night.
,ptim
ercrnusarazbiaofenototfhendthibesyisantangfhiotsofem
aT
sheipul
from doodles on the edges of an organized page to absurd animals and imprecise
humanoid creatures of strange anatomy that fill the biblical texts. The gargoyles and the sculptures
grotesques of ornamentation, lurking in the beams or atop the ceilings of the cathedrals,
they record in the same way the fantasies of a bored or depressed hand that suddenly feels
the need to populate the margins. The maps and travel diaries inherited from the
antiquity invented an entire geography of the mind and populated it with exotic and fantastic creatures;
Ultima Thule, Ethiopia and the Antipodes were the medieval equivalents of outer space or the
virtual reality, imaginary geographies (completely verbal) accessible from anywhere, without
intentions to be discovered but always waiting to be explored. Jacques Le Goff has written
that the Indian Ocean (a 'mental horizon' imagined in the Middle Ages that was completely
surrounded by land) was a cultural space

where taboos were eliminated or exchanged for others. The rarity of this world
it produced an impression of ease and freedom. The strict morality imposed by the
The church was contrasted with the attraction that forms a world of bizarre flavors, which
they practiced coprophagy and cannibalism; of bodily innocence, where man, free from
the modesty of clothing, rediscovers nudism and sexual freedom; and where, once freed from
restrictive monogamy and family barriers could give way to polygamy, the
incest and eroticism.

Theabodesofmonsters(Africa,Scandinavia,America,Venus,theCelticQuadrant-any
land sufficiently distant to be eroticized) are much more than regions of peril
uncertain: they are also worlds of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation. Their monsters work
as secondary bodies through which the possibilities of others can be explored
genders, other sexual practices and other social customs. Hermaphrodites, Amazons and the
Lascivious cannibals mark the edges of the world, the most distant planets of the galaxy.
aniht iwre t snm
oeht fonoi tpo-ocehT
neutralization of potentially threatening aspects with a free dose of comedy: the
thundering giants become clumsy63Monsters can function, however, as

62
Paul Coates observes that 'horror movies become an essential form of cinema, monstrous content'
"they manifest themselves in the monstrous form of the giant screen."
63
ForMikhailBakhtin,thisisthetransformativepoweroflaughter:'Laughterfreesnotonlyfromexternalcensorshipbut,aboveall,
of an internal censorship: freeing from the fear that man has developed over thousands of years; fear of the sacred, fear of
 fantasy vehicles causing effects still without inverted values. What Bakhtin called the "official culture"
one can transfer everything that is seen as undesirable to the body of the monster, a body that interprets
the drama of fulfilling one's own desire; the monster as a scapegoat is perhaps ritually
destroyed in the course of some official narrative, purging the community by eliminating its
The eradication of the monsters works like an exorcism and, when it is enacted and
repeat, like a catechism. The Quest of the Holy Grail, elaborated in a monastic way, serves as a
antidote ecclesiastically sanctioned for the broadest morality of secular romances; when
S
rB
nidsfoim
hriefatslw
catsheathdseloir'fdecnatndghieam
nrtk'pm
hti w
htei
sexual complacency, these young ladies are, of course, demons in a lascivious disguise. When Boris
refuses to lie down with one of these transcorporeal devils (described as "so beautiful and so
beautiful as if all earthly beauty was personified in them), their strong affirmation of
control makes them fade away, sending them back to hell. This episode values celibacy,
very important for the author's belief system (and so difficult to fulfill), while also
It instilled a lesson of morality for the secular audience of the work, the knights and women of the
cut enthusiasts for romances.
However,monstersarerarelyassimpleintheiruseandmanufacturingastheyare
demons that hunt Sir Boris. (...) Eldenso symbolism that creates the descriptive thickness of the monsters
in Spencer, Milton and even in Beowulf, challenges us to remember how permeable can be the
monstrous body, how difficult it is to dissect.
Thisbodilyfluency,thisconvergenceofdesireandconcern,guaranteesthatthemonster
it will always seduce dangerously. A certain intrigue is allowed even in the dog-headed of Vicent
Beauvis,sinceitoccupiesatextualspaceofattractionpriortoitsrejection,duringwhichitis
grants an undeniable charm. The monster lurks anywhere, in those primitive spaces.
and ambiguous between fear and attraction, very close to what Julia Kristeva calls "abjection":

There are threats within abjection, one of those dark and violent uprisings of
it seems to be directed against a threat that appears to emanate from the outside or inside
exorbitant, propelled beyond the sphere of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It
find there, very close, but cannot be assimilated. It begs, worries, fascinates and, no
However, it does not allow itself to be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns; disgusted, it rejects. But
simultaneously, at the same time, that momentum, that spasm, that jump is drawn towards
a beyond as tempting as it is condemned. Relentlessly, like a boomerang of the
that cannot escape, a vortex of pleas and repulsion that places the obsessive,
literally, out of oneself.

Andtheonewhoissuddenlyandnervouslynexttoyouisthemonster.
i t i tnedifosdnikl lafnoim
tarofehw
tosl latahttm
ngearftcejbaehtsiretm
senT
ho
personal, national, cultural, economic, sexual, psychological, universal, particular (even if
that 'particular' identity is an understanding of the power/status/knowledge of abjection
same); as revealed by its partiality, its contiguity. Product of a multitude of morphogenesis

the prohibitions, to the past, to power. The popular culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The context of Francois
Rabelais.
(the somatic cue to the ethnic) that aligns to imbue a sense of Us and Them that
It is behind every way of having to do with culture, the monster of abjection resides in that geography.
marginal of the outside, beyond the limits of the thinkable, a place that is undoubtedly dangerous:
simultaneously "exorbitant" and "very close". Judith Butler calls this conceptual locus "a
the domain of uninhabitability and intelligibility that borders on the domain of intelligible effects
it points out that even though it is discursively closed, it offers a basis for criticism, a framework from the
Is it possible to reread the dominant paradigms? Like Grendel roaring from the cave or the
Dracula emerging from the grave, like the 'boomerang, a vortex of pleas' from Kristeva or the
strange return of the Freudian-Lacanian repressed is always on the verge of irruption.
Maybe it's time to ask the question that always arises when the monster is discussed.
seriously (the inevitability of a question that questions a symptom of a deep concern
about what it is and what must be thinkable, a concern that is destined to take on the process of
a monstrous theory): Do monsters really exist?
Surely,yes,becauseifitweren'tso,whatwouldwedo?

THESS
IV
T
:IHEMONSTERS
ILOCATED
AT
THETHRESHOL
O
D
..F
.BECOMN
IG

This thing of darkness that I acknowledge as my own.

Themonstersareourchildren.Theycanbepushedtothefurthestmarginsofthe
geography and the discourse, being hidden at the edges of the world and in the space of the forbidden
our mind, but they will always return. And when they do, they will bring not only a greater knowledge
deep in our place in history and the history of knowledge of our place, but
they will carry a self-knowledge, a human knowledge - and a discourse much more sacred that
it raises from the Outside. The monsters ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have
distorted the space we try to inhabit. They ask us to reevaluate our statements.
cultural issues regarding race, gender, sexuality, our perception of the different, our
tolerance towards its expression. They ask us why we created them.