Monstrous Society

Author : David Collings
Publisher : Associated University Presse
ISBN 13 : 9780838757208
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Monstrous Society written by David Collings and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2009 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Monstrous Society problematizes competing representations of reciprocity in England in the decades around 1800. It argues that in the eighteenth-century moral economy, power is divided between official authority and the counter-power of plebeians. This tacit, mutual understanding comes under attack when influential political thinkers, such as Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, and T.R. Malthus, attempt to discipline the social body, to make state power immune from popular response. But once negated, counter-power persists, even if in the demands of a debased, inhuman body. Such a response is writ large in Gothic tales, especially Matthew Lewis's The Monk and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and in the innovative, embodied political practices of the mass movements for Reform and the Charter. By interpreting the formation of modern English culture through the early modern practice of reciprocity, David Collings constructs a "nonmodern" mode of analysis, one that sees modernity not as a break from the past but as the result of attempts to transform traditions that, however distorted, nevertheless remain broadly in force."--Jacket.

Author : Diego Compagna
Publisher : Vernon Press
ISBN 13 : 1622738934
Total Pages : 426 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Monsters, Monstrosities, and the Monstrous in Culture and Society written by Diego Compagna and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Existing research on monsters acknowledges the deep impact monsters have especially on Politics, Gender, Life Sciences, Aesthetics and Philosophy. From Sigmund Freud’s essay ‘The Uncanny’ to Scott Poole’s ‘Monsters in America’, previous studies offer detailed insights about uncanny and immoral monsters. However, our anthology wants to overcome these restrictions by bringing together multidisciplinary authors with very different approaches to monsters and setting up variety and increasing diversification of thought as ‘guiding patterns’. Existing research hints that monsters are embedded in social and scientific exclusionary relationships but very seldom copes with them in detail. Erving Goffman’s doesn’t explicitly talk about monsters in his book ‘Stigma’, but his study is an exceptional case which shows that monsters are stigmatized by society because of their deviations from norms, but they can form groups with fellow monsters and develop techniques for handling their stigma. Our book is to be understood as a complement and a ‘further development’ of previous studies: The essays of our anthology pay attention to mechanisms of inequality and exclusion concerning specific historical and present monsters, based on their research materials within their specific frameworks, in order to ‘create’ engaging, constructive, critical and diverse approaches to monsters, even utopian visions of a future of societies shared by monsters. Our book proposes the usual view, that humans look in a horrified way at monsters, but adds that monsters can look in a critical and even likewise frightened way at the very societies which stigmatize them.

Author : Alexa Wright
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0857722409
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Monstrosity written by Alexa Wright and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 'Monster of Ravenna' to the 'Elephant Man', Myra Hindley and Ted Bundy, the visualisation of 'real', human monsters has always played a part in how society sees itself. But what is the function of a monster? Why do we need to embody and represent what is monstrous? This book investigates the appearance of the human monster in Western culture, both historically and in our contemporary society. It argues that images of real (rather than fictional) human monsters help us both to identify and to interrogate what constitutes normality; we construct what is acceptable in humanity by depicting what is not quite acceptable. By exploring theories and examples of abnormality, freakishness, madness, otherness and identification, Alexa Wright demonstrates how monstrosity and the monster are social and cultural constructs. However, it soon becomes clear that the social function of the monster – however altered a form it takes – remains constant; it is societal self-defence allowing us to keep perceived monstrosity at a distance. Through engaging with the work of Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Canguilhem (to name but a few) Wright scrutinises and critiques the history of a mode of thinking. She reassesses and explodes conventional concepts of identity, obscuring the boundaries between what is 'normal' and what is not.

Author : Andrea S. Dauber
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1848882971
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Monsters in Society: An Interdisciplinary Perspective written by Andrea S. Dauber and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452900558
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Monster theory [electronic resource] written by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1996-11-15 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition.

Author : Joseph P. Laycock
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793640254
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous written by Joseph P. Laycock and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters explores the intersection of the emerging field of “monster theory” within religious studies. With case studies from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary valleys of the Himalayas to ghost tours in Savannah, Georgia, the volume examines the variegated nature of the monstrous as well as the cultural functions of monsters in shaping how we see the world and ourselves. In this, the authors constructively assess the state of the two fields of monster theory and religious studies, and propose new directions in how these fields can inform each other. The case studies included illuminate the ways in which monsters reinforce the categories through which a given culture sees the world. At the same time, the volume points to how monsters appear to question, disrupt, or challenge those categories, creating an ‘unsettling’ or surplus of meaning.

Author : Rebecca Merkelbach
Publisher : Medieval Institute Publications
ISBN 13 : 9781501518362
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Monsters in Society written by Rebecca Merkelbach and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dragons, giants, and the monsters of learned discourse are rarely encountered in the Sagas of Icelanders, and therefore, the general teratological focus on physical monstrosity yields only limited results when applied to them. This, however, does not equal an absence of monstrosity - it only means that monstrosity is conceived of differently. This book shifts the view of monstrosity from the physical to the social, accounting for the unique social circumstances presented in the Íslendingasögur and demonstrating how closely interwoven the social and the monstrous are in this genre. Employing literary and cultural theory as well as anthropological and historical approaches, it reads the monsters of the Íslendingasögur in their literary and socio-cultural context, demonstrating that they are not distractions from feud and conflict, but that they are in fact an intrinsic part of the genre's re-imagining of the past for the needs of the present.

Author : Niall Scott
Publisher : Rodopi
ISBN 13 : 9042022531
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Monsters and the Monstrous written by Niall Scott and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging from depths comes a series of papers dealing with one of the most significant creations that reflects on and critiques human existence. Both a warning and a demonstration, the monster as myth and metaphor provides an articulation of human imagination that toys with the permissible and impermissible. Monsters from zombies to cuddly cartoon characters, emerging from sewers, from pages of literature, propaganda posters, movies and heavy metal, all are covered in this challenging, scholarly collection. This volume the third in the series presents a marvellous collection of studies on the metaphor of the monster in literature, cinema, music, culture, philosophy, history and politics. Both historical reflection and concerns of our time are addressed with clarity and written in an accessible manner providing appeal for the scholar and lay reader alike. This eclectic collection will be of interest to academics and students working in a range of disciplines, such as cultural studies, film studies, political theory, philosophy and literature studies.

Author : Jennifer Spinks
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317316150
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany written by Jennifer Spinks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an exmination of printed representations of monstrous births in German-speaking Europe from the end of the fifteenth century and through the sixteenth century, beginning with a seminal series of broadsheets from the late 1490s by humanist Sebastian Brant, and including prints by Albrecht Durer and Hans Burgkmair.

Author : Raechel Dumas
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319924656
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture written by Raechel Dumas and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the monstrous-feminine in Japanese popular culture, produced from the late years of the 1980s through to the new millennium. Raechel Dumas examines the role of female monsters in selected works of fiction, manga, film, and video games, offering a trans-genre, trans-media analysis of this enduring trope. The book focuses on several iterations of the monstrous-feminine in contemporary Japan: the self-replicating shōjo in horror, monstrous mothers in science fiction, female ghosts and suburban hauntings in cinema, female monsters and public violence in survival horror games, and the rebellious female body in mytho-fiction. Situating the titles examined here amid discourses of crisis that have materialized in contemporary Japan, Dumas illuminates the ambivalent pleasure of the monstrous-feminine as a trope that both articulates anxieties centered on shifting configurations of subjectivity and nationhood, and elaborates novel possibilities for identity negotiation and social formation in a period marked by dramatic change.