The Unnameable Monster in Literature and Film

This book visits the Thing in its various manifestations as an unnameable monster in literature and lm, reinforcing the idea that the very essence of the monster is its excess and its indeterminacy. Tied primarily to the artistic modes of the gothic, science ction, and horror, the unnameable monster retains a persistent presence in literary forms as a reminder of the sublime object that exceeds our worst fears. Beville examines various representations of this elusive monster and argues that we must look at the monster, rather than through it at ourselves. As such, this book responds to the obsessive manner in which the monsters of literature and culture are managed in processes of classi cation and in claims that they serve a social function by embodying all that is horrible in the human imagina-tion. The book primarily considers literature from the Romantic period to the present, and lms that lean toward postmodernism. Incorporating disciplines such as cultural theory, lm theory, literary criticism, and conti-nental philosophy, it focuses on that most diffi cult but interesting quality of the monster, its unnameability, in order to transform and accelerate current readings of not only the monsters of literature and lm, but also those that are the focus of contemporary theoretical discussion.

Maria Beville is Lecturer in English at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature

1 Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century Edited by Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry, and Ken Hiltner

2 Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and LiteratureElizabeth Swanson Goldbergand Alexandra Schultheis Moore

3 Resistance to Science in Contemporary American PoetryBryan Walpert

4 Magic, Science, and Empire in Postcolonial Literature: The Alchemical Literary ImaginationKathleen J. Renk

5 The Black Female Body in American Literature and ArtPerforming IdentityCaroline A. Brown

6 Narratives of Migration and Displacement in Dominican LiteratureDanny Mndez

7 The Cinema and the Origins of Literary ModernismAndrew Shail

8 The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular CulturePop GothEdited by Justin D. Edwardsand Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet

9 Wallace Stevens and Pre-Socratic PhilosophyMetaphysics and the Play of ViolenceDaniel Tompsett

10 Modern OrthodoxiesJudaic Imaginative Journeys of the Twentieth CenturyLisa Mulman

11 Eugenics, Literature, and Culture in Post-war BritainClare Hanson

12 Postcolonial Readings of Music in World LiteratureTurning Empire on Its EarCameron Fae Bushnell

13 Stanley Cavell, Literature, and Film: The Idea of AmericaEdited by Andrew Taylorand ine Kelly

14 William Blake and the Digital HumanitiesCollaboration, Participation,and Social MediaJason Whittakerand Roger Whitson

15 American Studies, Ecocriticism, and CitizenshipThinking and Acting in the Local and Global CommonsEdited by Joni Adamsonand Kimberly N. Ruf n

16 International Perspectives on Feminist EcocriticismEdited by Greta Gaard, Simon C. Estok, and Serpil Oppermann

17 Feminist Theory across DisciplinesFeminist Community and American Womens PoetryShira Wolosky

18 Mobile NarrativesTravel, Migration,and TransculturationEdited by Eleftheria Arapoglou, Mnika Fodor, and Jopi Nyman

19 Shipwreck in Art and LiteratureImages and Interpretations from Antiquity to the Present DayEdited by Carl Thompson

20 Literature, Speech Disorders, and DisabilityTalking NormalEdited by Chris Eagle

21 The Unnameable Monster in Literature and FilmMaria Beville

This page intentionally left bank

The Unnameable Monster in Literature and Film

Maria Beville

First published 2014by Routledge711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Simultaneously published in the UKby Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 Taylor & Francis

The right of Maria Beville to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataBeville, Maria. The unnameable monster in literature and film / by Maria Beville. pages cm. (Routledge interdisciplinary perspectives on literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Monsters in literature. 2. Monsters in motion pictures. I. Title. PN56.M55B48 2013 808.8'037dc23 2013025203

ISBN13: 978-0-415-83362-2 (hbk)ISBN13: 978-0-203-49691-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global.

Contents

List of Figures ixPreface xiAcknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1 Monsters as We Know Them: A History of Named Monsters 14

2 Articulating the Abstract: Theories of the Unnameable 51

3 Things Not to be Named nor Understood: The Unnameable Monster in Nineteenth Century Literature 70

4 The Thing Keeps Coming Back: Modern and Postmodern Nondescripts 101

5 The Spectacle of the Lack: Realising the Monster on Screen 128

Conclusion 179

Notes 187References 191Index 201

This page intentionally left bank

Figures

1.1 Statue of the Golem of Prague, Prague city centre. 221.2 Polyphemus, the Cyclops, as imagined by Johann Heinrich

Wilhelm Tischbein. 251.3 This image of Heracles & the Hydra decorates a panel on

a vessel from the sixth century BC. Currently held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Califorina. 28

1.4 Image of a Blemmye taken from A Declaration of a Strange and Wonderful Monster: Born in Kirkham Parish. 32

1.5 A popular and iconic image of the goddess Kali duplicated uncountable times in Hindi pulp calendars throughout the twentieth century. 39

1.6 A medieval image of hell as a mouth. 421.7 The Irish Frankenstein. 475.1 A massive vacuous space in the ice is uncovered in The

Thing (1982) Universal Pictures. 1325.2 The Kennel Scene, The Thing (1982) Universal Pictures. 1415.3 The sublime, impossibly tall creature breaks the frame of

The Mist (2007) MGM. 1475.4 Kubrick sets up a symbolic hall of mirrors in The Shining

(1980) Warner Bros. Pictures. 1575.5 Danny replicates Theseus in the suspenseful labyrinth scenes

of The Shining (1980) Warner Bros. 1595.6 The face of the Other emerges from the other side in

Poltergeist (1982) MGM. 1695.7 The Thing in the woods is revealed as a mish-mash of

horror and fairy tale monstrosities in The Village (2004) Touchstone. 174

This page intentionally left bank

Preface

Prepare yourself to experience the future and welcome the monster

Jacques Derrida, 1995, 385

A critical analysis of the unnameable monster in literature and lm is inexo-rably drawn to examine that which is uncomfortable, fearsome, and all too often horri c. When we consider that which is impossible to name and rep-resent we are led to the darkest corners of human subjectivity and language. What lurks in the shadows of what can be said, and what is sayable, is a formidable and awesome Thing. Sublime by virtue of its inaccessibility, its infringement on identity and, as such, its awe-inspiring nature; the Thing is an unnameable and monstrous Other. Importantly, the Thing poses an important recurring subject for artistic and cultural production. Whether it is as part of the representation of a lurking fear, an unexplainable mystery, or an encounter with a formless entity, the unnameable monster is present in literature and lm most notably as part of an exploration of identity and its limits. It habitually occupies the pages of Gothic, science- ction, and horror writing and cinema revealing its own intimate connection to the inherently paradoxical artistic presentation of the unrepresentable.

In contemporary terms, the literature and lm that concerns itself with the unnameable monster and the aesthetic implications of its very being, is part of a philosophical enterprise that negotiates the status of Other-ness. In literature and lm that deals with the unnamed and unnameable monster, the unrepresentable is explored and appreciated as a Thing in itself. As an elusive entity in these texts, the Thing forces us to consider the world as it exists beyond representation: language, reproduction, and simulation. For this reason, it is both an exciting and stimulating subject in terms of its potential for cultural and theoretical criticism and until now, it has remained unexplored to its full potential.

Accordingly, this book, taking an approach formed in and through the-ories of aesthetics, post-structuralism, and contemporary psychoanalytic theory, seeks to bring an important academic focus to the sublime paradox of the Thing that is the unnameable monster. It focuses speci cally on its pervasive presence in literature and lm as a counterpoint to monster that is consistently named and classi ed. Thus, this study responds to a general problem in teratology, which is the avoidance of the ultimate excess and unrepresentability of the monster due to obsessive concentration on

xii Preface

processes of labelling, cataloguing, and rationalisation. This book acknowl-edges that despite our best eff orts to explain the monster and the monstrous, there remains in the cultural sphere, a particular monster that de es our attempts to manage it in processes of naming. This is the unnameable mon-ster. When we attempt to speak of it, it becomes slippery, heterogonous, and nebulous; it evades, but it also invades the imagination as a valuable experience of absolute Otherness.

Indeed, my own approach imposes a further categorisation upon the monster. However, in recognising and referring to the monsters essential impenetrability, unnameable monster is a category that does not limit, but rather, celebrates the excess of the monster. This relates to my basic method-ology, which is inspired by Bill Browns Thing theory. Brown reminds us that we begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us (2001: 4). We must look at the Thing rather than looking through it. As the monster in contemporary terms is now ideologically saturated to the point that the concept obscures the monstrosity of the monster itself, we must attempt to approach its thingness beyond the value of the sign. Arguably, such an approach can off er new ways of understanding the mon-ster and its cultural signi cance. It allows us to consider the monster in and of itself before we evaluate its cultural functions and our psychological responses to it. Ultimately, we will see that the monster is neither object, nor subject, but a Thing; a distinction that has long been essential to its representation in literary and lmic forms. Consequently, this book sets out engage with the monster as a Thing in itself, and in doing to, to substanti-ate a need to explore the unnameable monsters of literature and of cinema, as well as those nebulous Others that have consistently found their way into modern cultural representation, as a reminder of the essential elusivity of Otherness.

Acknowledgments

Numerous people deserve acknowledgment and thanks for their sup-port during the writing of this book. Many of the arguments and ideas developed within it emerged from conversations with my colleagues at the Institute for Aesthetics and Communication at Aarhus University and the English Department at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. In particular, thanks to Mathias Clasen for the book loans and sugges-tions, and to Matthias Stephan for listening to numerous recon gurations of my initial arguments.

I am grateful to my fellow coordinators at the Centre for Studies in Oth-erness, in particular Susan Sencindiver, who was frequently a soundboard for my interpretations of theory and philosophy. And also to the Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australias coordinator, Lorna Piatti-Far-nell, who off ered me a valuable outlet for the presentation of my research.

This page intentionally left bank

Introduction

ENCOUNTERING THE MONSTER AND NAMING THE OTHER

In seeking to undertake analyses of the cultural and symbolic value of the monster in lm and literature, much critical writing places itself in rela-tion to that diffi cult binary that society has always been ready to enforce between human and other. As a result of this binary, the monster, although frequently acknowledged as inde nable, remains inde nitely within the cul-tural spheres of the repressed, the abject, and/or the uncanny. A dichoto-mous approach to teratology dominates, and habitually this approach leads to a general preoccupation with the monsters subversive potential as a guration of Otherness: a characterisation that counterpoints most aspects of mainstream culture, history, and identity. Engaging with the cultural dynamics of the monster from this perspective, many studies invariably attempt to manage the monster in processes of classi cation. Such attempts to control the Otherness of the monster are seen in claims that the monster serves a social function as an embodiment of fear that enacts a purging and a projection of our most basic anxieties, or as a manifestation of all that is horrible in the human imagination (Gilmore 2003: 1).

In contrast with the bulk of research that precedes it, this book begins from the observation that both within and outside recent and current stud-ies of the monster, there remains a diffi cult category of monster that de es all attempts to constrain it in naming and, as such, our utilitarian attempts to reduce it to some sense of functionality. This monster belies the notion that Otherness can be controlled and assimilated. The unnameable mon-ster, which is marginalised, and in many cases omitted from similar enqui-ries, is the focus of this project, which seeks to examine the monster that cannot be named or represented. In particular, this study looks directly at the unnameable monster that is the Thing in its various cultural formu-lations in literature and lm, thus consciously avoiding the binary driven ideology that informs conventional ideas of the monster and also of the unspeakable more generally. Additionally, taking the monstrous aside from readings that suggest that it belongs to the psycho-cultural sphere of the repressed, the aim is to achieve a heterogeneous approach to the study of

2 The Unnameable Monster in Literature and Film

the monster by focusing on the sublime and unrepresentable aspects of its being. I understand it as an artistic representation of the absolute Other: that which is principally extraneous to both personal and cultural subjectivity. Retreating from assertions that the monster is ontologically dependent on human subjectivity, I contend that the unnameable monster, as evidenced in its ctional and lmic con gurations, exists enigmatically and to an extent, autonomously. It terri es us with its alien presence, and yet it fascinates us with its mysterious circumvention of epistemological frameworks. For this reason, the unnameable monster that is the Thing is a worthy study in itself and merits both academic recognition and analysis.

Understanding the Thing from a perspective that combines postmod-ern theoretical approaches with literary aesthetics, while also consider-ing the ideas of Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Slavoj iek, I regard the Thing as a locus for the symbolisation of the Real, acknowledging that symbolisation will always and ultimately, be incomplete. This is the fundamental paradox of the unnameable. It is the intimation of something that can never be known. Although we are aware of its presence, this presence is inevitably an absence. Working outward from this essential contradiction, the following chapters exam-ine the various strategies undertaken in literature and lm in the repre-sentation of the monster that is recognised to be unrepresentable. While these representations can be seen to vary in their complexity (and this complexity will be discussed), they enact an awareness of the importance of the unnameable qualities of the monster and more broadly of the lim-its of language with regard to the complicated relationship between self and other. Through analysing a series of selected modern texts, I suggest a new approach to understanding the monster in literature and lm and a re-evaluation of the importance of the essential unrepresentability of many literary and lmic monsters. I do so with a speci c focus on the Idea of the Thing as the core of the symbolic potential of the monster.1 Subsequently the analyses off ered here also work to expand current dis-cussions of the genres of the fantastic, science- ction, Gothic, and hor-ror, in particular in relation to their engagement with the aesthetics of the monstrous and the sublime.

David Gilmores fascinating book Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors (2003) chronologically accounts for the vari-ous cultural manifestations of the monster across history. Arguing that the mind needs monsters (2003: 1), he presents a chronicle of human-itys greatest imagined Others, linking them in terms of a comprehensive anthropological method. It should be stated from the outset here, that stud-ies such as Gilmores are not rejected by my own methodology. Instead they serve to frame it by revealing a gap in research on the monster that requires some consideration. As the rst chapter of this book serves to demonstrate, chronologies and taxonomies of the monster are part of a much broader cultural obsession with naming and quantifying the monster. They can also

Introduction 3

be seen to participate in the establishment of the monster metaphor. The monster as metaphor is the monster as it has been normalised so completely in terms of our current linguistic frameworks that it can no longer exist autonomously before it is perceived by the subject. The Idea of the monster is invaded by radical semiotic saturation. Monster retreats from the real-ity of the Thing it once signi ed. As a result, the monster metaphor comes to dominate the primary experience of the monstrous to which it refers, and the monster that was originally behind the metaphor recedes beyond our linguistic capacities to reach it.

Richard Kearney, whose approach to the monster diff ers signi cantly from those found in criticism in the vein of Gilmores, has taken an important non-binary approach to the question of the monster. Reading the monster in tandem with the notion of the divine and the concept of the stranger, Kearney postulates a unique rendering of the symbolic value of the monster. Kearney recognises the monster as Other and not sim-ply as a manifestation of personal or instinctual fears. He claims that a new dynamic can be broached in the reception of the monsterone that reconciles the grotesque Otherness of the monster and its unthinkable dimensions. His suggestion is, basically, that there is a need to construct a dialogue between the sublime and the monstrous in order to achieve an ethical and hospitable relationship to the Other. Taking on a method that combines disparate perspectives, and which he de nes as a diacriti-cal hermeneutics, he highlights how monsters (just as much as strangers and gods) are a fundamental feature of our cultural identities and thus an essential part of the formation of human identity. The excess of the monster can be appreciated from this atypical point of view. It is an excess that pushes the limits of the subject and therein forces a reordering of the structures that uphold our desire to contain Otherness through processes of rejection and repression.

Through the range of analyses off ered in this book, I wish to work from Kearneys model of the monster to claim that it is through language that diff erence is generally alienated as monstrous. Discussing the Thing and its thingness outside of taxonomical frameworks and as part of creative depictions found in literature and lm furthers our potential to move beyond a negative view of Otherness and toward an appreciation of dif-ference. Jeff rey Jerome Cohen notes that for the most part monstrous dif-ference tends to be cultural, political, racial, economic, sexual (1996: 7). But monstrous diff erence is more than just part of identity politics: it is a part of identity formation and personal subjectivity and is a complex part of the construction of both intimate and universal realities. As such, rather than attempt the ethical forging of a route from Self to Other through this research, my intention is to uncover a new dimension of the monster that can aid a broader understanding of multiple notions of alterity. I concen-trate on a particularly neglected aspect of the monster, one that expands the dynamic of our relationship to ultimacy and diff erence.

4 The Unnameable Monster in Literature and Film

MONSTER AND MONSTROUS

Steven Asma, while engaging in a study that is quite similar to Gilmores and which shares insight with Cohen regarding the cultural contexts of monster types, acknowledges the source of this paradox of the monster: the gap which is the unrepresentable. Asma, in discussing the meaning of the word monster, claims that a breakdown of intelligibility de nes the adjective monstrous (2009: 10). Relating this unintelligibility, to a certain extent, to human psychology, Asma, unfortunately, overwrites this impor-tant claim and further deviates from it through a focus on evolutionary theory. He uses this focus to explain the monster and our fear of it. How-ever, his initial claim is worth further deliberation. The term monstrous can apply very broadly in its various uses. The polysemic nature of the word in contemporary language practice means that just about anything can be described as monstrous or monster-like. Nonetheless, there is a disparity between the meaning potential of the functional adjective mon-strous, and the noun monster. This disparity stems from the fact that the monster is principally a referent to the same excess that de nes the concept of the Thing in itself: that which is ultimately inherent to, and radically beyond, the subject. The premise for this suggestion is that monstrous, being an adjective, should denote the epistemological or cultural qualities of an object, while the noun, monster, suggests ontological issues relating to the Thing itself.

Substantiating this claim, the named referent in the noun, monster, is inextricably linked to perspective. Despite its universal acceptance and rel-evance, monster is a subjective term. To ask the question what is a mon-ster? is to accept a multiplicity of varied potential answers. Dictionary evaluations of the term relay only the idea of excess and fear. This doesnt clarify much. Similarly, if we were to ask a child to draw us a picture of a monster, in most cases, the result would be ambiguous in form and outline. The child, although he or she does not know what the monster looks like, has an Idea of a monster as a source of fear. Of course, the image would inevitably be in uenced by cultural frames of reference, but until cultural systems take over the representation as the child becomes more exposed to various representations of monster-types, the monster is more than lan-guage. It is more than individual representation can accommodate.

This suggestion aside, the term monster, requires some further ety-mological consideration. We know that the word derives from the Latin monere, meaning to warn, which ties in signi cantly with medieval interpretations of the monster as an omen or portent. Also linked to mon-strare, as in to demonstrate or to show, monster implies a physical per-formance of existence. It is not simply a linguistic account or description. Exempli ed again here is an important distinction that must be drawn between monster and uses of the adjective monstrous, particularly if we consider the connotations associated with monstrous in recent years.

Introduction 5

In current use, monstrous suggests a diverse array of characteristics. It can refer to something immoral, heinous, or unjust, or to something abnormally large, or, equally, to that which is fearsome, unnaturally ugly, or hideous. Signi cantly, it is a term that is applied most frequently to human behaviour, describing acts of brutal violence and terrorism. But also, unfortunately, it describes human physical features, accounting for excessive unattractiveness and deformity. Generally, we use the word to explain things that we cannot understand, and for the most part this applies to behaviour when it is seen to have transgressed the limits of what we ourselves can imagine doing.

The origin and uses of the words surely lead to the some if not all of the following questions: what is it that the monster demonstrates? What is it that connects the term monster to the endlessly deferred referent to which it refers? Is it something that can be ever clearly identi ed? What is it about the monster that we are so afraid of and fascinated by? One answer quali es all of these questions: ultimacy. The monster intimates the idea of extremity, of absolute diff erence, and of our own nite nature, and this, at least in part, is the reason for our consistent cultural association of the monster with death. Interestingly, although working from a fundamentally diff erent perspective, Darwinian and psychological theories of the mon-ster would support this assumption. The abnormality and excess inherent in the monster is often seen from the perspective of evolutionary theory to re ect a break from the chain of evolution that inevitably marks the end of the deformed organism. Even in the case of its survival and adap-tion, it marks the end of one particular species. We are hardwired to fear such deformities in order to maintain our own survival and productivity. Accordingly, the fear of the monster can be read as a primal fear. Although it is an approach that diverges somewhat from evolutionary theory, modern psychology considers death as an essential fear in the subject; so essential in fact, that is inaccessible. Death is acutely repressed and is impossible (according to Freud) for the human mind to imagine. It is this impossibility that in turn drives our most basic desires. The monster, from this perspec-tive, embodies our terror of this unimaginable death. Its extremity is a reminder of the fundamental excess of the end.

So, many diff erent theories accept the idea that the monster intimates the idea of absolute diff erence, and of our own nite nature. This is the premise for my argument that the monster, once it has been categorised, is no longer a monster. Instead it is a werewolf, a vampire, a zombie, or a cyborg. Its excess, which is its monstrous nature, is sidestepped when it is classi ed, and when we are allowed to evaluate our levels of fear in relation to it from a position of safety and distance. When a monster is de ned as a werewolf, it becomes part of a systematised site of fear. It enters a schema with rules for how the monster can be contained and repelled and which delineate its existence in a most basic way. The monster is thus reduced to the level of stock-type character. Named, it is no longer unpredictable. Its Otherness

6 The Unnameable Monster in Literature and Film

is contained and managed and in its new form, as a label, the monster is ready to be commercialised, marketed, and sold.

THE MONSTER AS CULTURE

Overviewing approaches to teratology, the anthropological approach stands out as a solid attempt to understand the cultural signi cance of the Otherness of the monster: the diff erence that at various points sets the monster apart from the human and that assigns its negativity. Taking this anthropological approach, Cohen set out a fascinating seven theses on the monster and claims that monsters can allow us to learn about the cultures in which they are engendered (1996: 3). He claims in these theses that [m]onsters are the embodiment of a cultural moment (4). To an extent this is true. Undeniably, monsters aff ect a given culture in the responses that they engender, and also in terms of the manner in which they come to be con-structed within the pre-existing systems of that culture. However it is not the monster itself, but the systematic characterisation of the monster within a given culture that re ects societal fears and anxieties and that are reveal-ing of a cultural moment. The monster itself ees from our cultural control, but a remnant of it is left behind to mirror the basic fears and anxieties that erupted in the original encounter with monstrosity.

Following from the idea that monsters are culturally and historically speci c, Cohen also claims that in spite of this, the monster itself turns immaterial and vanishes, to reappear somewhere else (4). Here, in this claim, is an affi rmation of the slippery and evasive nature of the monster as it exceeds both tangible form and representation. Cohen also pays close attention to the unnameability of the monster in saying that monsters are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration . . . a form suspended between forms that threaten to smash distinctions (6). Despite his awareness of the irreducible nature of the monster, Cohens theses consistently reduce the monster to a function. While on the one hand, he states that the monster resists systematic structuration, on the other, he imposes his own highly systematised structure upon the monster concept, implicating his theses in the very methods of classi cation that the monster endlessly slips away from. The paradox of the monster and its excess is avoided. As in the case of much monster theory, Cohens focus is on the cultures that produce mon-sters and the monster in its own right is relegated to the status of symptom and function.

There is an unavoidable obstacle to all eff orts that attempt to create tax-onomies of monster types in order to connect them to signi cant cultural contexts. This is the fact that the monster is ultimately inde nable and intangible. Attempts to view the monster as a prototype category inevitably mediate the monster through paradigms of the essential and the universal.

Introduction 7

This re ects an important idea outlined by Claude Levi Strauss in relation to myth, to which, the monster is closely related, and to which it bears a number of important similarities. According to Levi Strauss, in his consid-eration of the interpretation of myth and its cultural signi cance, what-ever the situation, a clever dialectic will always nd a way to pretend that meaning has been found (1955: 428). This tendency to impose meaning on myth and the need for over-simpli cation parallels our relationship to the monster. The monster, like myth, is a complex concept: at once abstract and concrete, and simultaneously speci c and universal. In addition, Steven Schneider points out that [e]very monster is [ . . . ] a double narrative, two living stories: one that describes how the monster came to be and another, its testimony, detailing what cultural use the monster serves (1999: 13). In this way, the monster is read as a sign of a given cultural issue, and as part of cultural strategies to overcome such issues. In this interpretative context, the monster is frequently misunderstood simply because the contexts of the monsters cultural production are often full of disparities themselves. The monsters of diff erent cultures, while sharing many similarities from a folk-loristics perspective, are ultimately distinguished from each other through homogenous and therefore inaccurate notions of culture, and that is apart from dualistic tendencies that designate them as belonging to traditions of East and West.

The classi cation of monsters into various types has long been an exer-cise in which the types re ect more about speci c human fears than they do about the monster itself. These fears are always bound to cultural context and so particular types of monsters remain speci c to certain cultural and geographical regions. Processes of classi cation also tend to suggest that the monster is ontologically dependent on human subjectivity and knowl-edge. This allows for an interpretation of the diff erence of the monster as a functional part of our selves. The phenomenology of the monster is consequently overlooked as it becomes incorporated into theories of abjec-tion and projection. The aesthetics of the monster poses a major problem in these processes. According to Leo Stein [t]hings are what we encounter, ideas are what we project (1927: 44). There is a signi cant point about aes-thetic diff erence to be appreciated in this statement. Demoting the monster as other to the grade of projection or abjection inevitably raises problems for the construction of subjectivity. Emphasis is placed on otherness within, with little consideration of alterity beyond the self and its subjective coun-terparts. As such, denying the monster its status as absolute Other, means that we ultimately fail to recognise its real cultural and social signi cance.

The common position of incorporating the Other into narratives of the Self is a reaction, quite probably, to a fundamental antinomy pertaining to the monstrous. It is useful to consider Levi Strausss approach to myth here again. In many ways, the monster, like myth, seems to radicalise pos-sibility. A monster can be just about anything. It is without logic. From one perspective, it is arbitrary, random, and abstract. From another, it bears a