What we need is a “monster-centered ethics”
February 25, 2025 12:33 AM Subscribe
Humans offers a rich historical and literary survey of the pathological and contradictory means by which we define the monstrous, a process often slapdash and mutable. Tracing our history of monster-making through conversations around race-making and nation-building, gender and sexuality, our relationship to the divine, machines and extraterrestrials, the book reveals the myriad ways we express and compensate for a fundamental fear that we ourselves might not be “normal.” from Our Monsters, Ourselves [The Chronicle of Higher Education; ungated]
Unusually thoughtful for the Chronk. I quite appreciated this. Thanks for posting it!
posted by humbug at 5:44 AM on February 25 [3 favorites]
posted by humbug at 5:44 AM on February 25 [3 favorites]
I added this book to my list! Mittens, your argument aligns with some of what W. Scott Poole talks about in Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror. He does a historical analysis of the post-war period in Europe and discusses how exposure to industrial warfare, mass death, and innumerable corpses really instilled in European cultures a sense of alienation and horror that was born out in zombies and vampires on screen. Nosferatu being one of the prime examples.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:01 AM on February 25 [6 favorites]
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:01 AM on February 25 [6 favorites]
the Chronk
Hah, I'm stealing this for IRL use - thanks.
Also adding this book to the "to read list" but I suspect I'll agree with the reviewer's main critique, ie. that sometimes monsters are created for good reason. Here I'm thinking of Luise White's Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa, which takes seriously the prevalence of vampire rumors in East/Central Africa, and finds all sorts of tie ins with the violence of colonialism. And then there's the classic children's stories, like Little Red Ridinghood or Hansel and Gretel which are basically a much older message of 'stranger danger.'
But regardless, looks interesting!
posted by coffeecat at 7:01 AM on February 25 [4 favorites]
Hah, I'm stealing this for IRL use - thanks.
Also adding this book to the "to read list" but I suspect I'll agree with the reviewer's main critique, ie. that sometimes monsters are created for good reason. Here I'm thinking of Luise White's Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa, which takes seriously the prevalence of vampire rumors in East/Central Africa, and finds all sorts of tie ins with the violence of colonialism. And then there's the classic children's stories, like Little Red Ridinghood or Hansel and Gretel which are basically a much older message of 'stranger danger.'
But regardless, looks interesting!
posted by coffeecat at 7:01 AM on February 25 [4 favorites]
If we're gonna talk fairy tales then I will use that as an excuse to bring up another of my favorite things, Robert Darnton's The Meaning of Mother Goose (NYRB; archive).
posted by mittens at 7:09 AM on February 25 [5 favorites]
posted by mittens at 7:09 AM on February 25 [5 favorites]
Monsters are always a violation of the natural order. I'm surprised there was nothing about monsters and sexual transgression. Often the idea of something being monstrous is tied to a violation of what is correct sexuality. Some of the most frightening monsters and the ones most hated are tied to death and sexual violation. Frankenstein's monster raised from the dead desiring a mate, the undead Nosferatu infatuated with a young girl, the titillation of aliens probing women, paralyzing people in living death. Real live monsters include Jack the Ripper, stabbing prostitutes. We talk about the horror of the monstrous genocidal Nazis, but the horrific experiments on women isn't discussed much. The monsters we're trying to create today have different color skin or are coming from other countries to invade our country, rape and kill, and take our jobs. We project all of our violence, including sexual violence, on the 'other' who is not like us, not normal like us. Monsters are always different from us. But we are the monsters.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:43 AM on February 25 [8 favorites]
posted by BlueHorse at 8:43 AM on February 25 [8 favorites]
This reminded me of that scene in Star Trek VI where they're dining with the Klingons and Checkov gets called out as racist for using the phrase 'inalienable human rights'.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:06 AM on February 25 [5 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:06 AM on February 25 [5 favorites]
I want to read everything mentioned in this post!! (opens list, adds to list, BWAH HAHA HAHAA!! *monstrous laughter*)
posted by supermedusa at 10:16 AM on February 25 [2 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 10:16 AM on February 25 [2 favorites]
... another of my favorite things, Robert Darnton's The Meaning of Mother Goose
There's some interesting anecdotes there.
There's some interesting anecdotes there.
In “La Poupée” (tale type 571C), a simpleminded orphan girl fails to observe these basic rules after receiving a magic doll, which excretes gold whenever she says, “Crap, crap, my little rag doll.” Before long she has bought several chickens and a cow and invites the neighbors in. One of them pretends to fall asleep by the fire and runs off with the doll as soon as the girl goes to bed. But when he says the magic words, it craps real crap, all over him. So he throws it on the dung heap. Then one day when he is doing some crapping of his own, it reaches up and bites him. He cannot pry it loose from his derrière until the girl arrives, reclaims her property, and lives mistrustfully ever after.posted by ovvl at 10:56 AM on February 25 [3 favorites]
This looks brilliant, I will definitely seek it out.
A lot of thoughts, but this:
Additionally, the humoral belief that environment and behavior may determine whether one is human or monster became increasingly fraught during the age of European colonialism. As Western European nations ramped up their colonialist projects in the Modern Era, commentators and philosophers wondered what would stop “normal” Europeans, newly exposed to differing climates, from turning monstrous.
...reminds me of The Vorrh, by B. Catling.
I will say that the review mentions race only once, early on, to refer to "race-making and nation-building," and sexuality not at all, and then goes on to say:
Borders continually shift, and we continually try to reestablish them and enforce them, depending on our beliefs and our needs at any given time. But during times of rapid change — cultural, technological, political — these shifts become acute and particularly fraught, which explains why we’re once again enmeshed in a heated, dire conversation about who is human and who a monster.
I can only hope that the book discusses more directly how expanding definitions of who is racially acceptable as human, and what forms of human sexuality may no longer be excluded has led fairly directly to our current anti-DEI craze, because the review (for perhaps entirely understandable reasons) has left it largely between the lines.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 11:25 AM on February 25 [2 favorites]
A lot of thoughts, but this:
Additionally, the humoral belief that environment and behavior may determine whether one is human or monster became increasingly fraught during the age of European colonialism. As Western European nations ramped up their colonialist projects in the Modern Era, commentators and philosophers wondered what would stop “normal” Europeans, newly exposed to differing climates, from turning monstrous.
...reminds me of The Vorrh, by B. Catling.
I will say that the review mentions race only once, early on, to refer to "race-making and nation-building," and sexuality not at all, and then goes on to say:
Borders continually shift, and we continually try to reestablish them and enforce them, depending on our beliefs and our needs at any given time. But during times of rapid change — cultural, technological, political — these shifts become acute and particularly fraught, which explains why we’re once again enmeshed in a heated, dire conversation about who is human and who a monster.
I can only hope that the book discusses more directly how expanding definitions of who is racially acceptable as human, and what forms of human sexuality may no longer be excluded has led fairly directly to our current anti-DEI craze, because the review (for perhaps entirely understandable reasons) has left it largely between the lines.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 11:25 AM on February 25 [2 favorites]
Additionally, the humoral belief that environment and behavior may determine whether one is human or monster became increasingly fraught during the age of European colonialism. As Western European nations ramped up their colonialist projects in the Modern Era, commentators and philosophers wondered what would stop “normal” Europeans, newly exposed to differing climates, from turning monstrous.
Supposedly normal Europeans ABSOLUTELY DID turn monstrous in the colonies.
Consider the Taino Genocide, for example:
Supposedly normal Europeans ABSOLUTELY DID turn monstrous in the colonies.
Consider the Taino Genocide, for example:
Dateposted by jamjam at 11:50 AM on February 25 [3 favorites]
1493–1550
Target
Taíno
Attack type
Genocide, mass murder, forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, slavery, starvation, collective punishment, mass rape, forced conversion
Deaths
Between 80% and 90% of the Taíno population died in first 30 years.[1][2]
Perpetrators
Spanish Empire
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Actually I'll mention another of those touchstones, which I know I've gone on about before, Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial and Death. The thesis of this book is that our idea of vampires comes from misinterpreting corpses in various stages of decay (occasionally coming into view through disturbances in the graves, weather-related, dog-related, etc.). A corpse is, pretty much by definition, an inhuman thing, maybe even anti-human.
So we have these two boundaries of the human--the fear of deformity and the fear of death--and on either side of those boundaries lurk monsters. Those fears are, I think, meant to keep us safe, to provide some agency against the forces that would maim or kill us. And so it's strange to think of us turning those fears inside-out, creating new monsters in new undiscovered countries for us to worry about, to justify ourselves being inhuman to these new monsters.
posted by mittens at 2:39 AM on February 25 [8 favorites]