Fallacy Presentations

Finalize presentations. You will be presenting them today.

Monster Culture (Seven Theses)

The theses are tools for us to use to analyze monster, in the cultural studies sense. The monsters the cultures produce say a lot about that culture. We create monsters that evolve over time, sometimes purposely for whatever reason.

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen – Monster Culture (Seven Theses) (p. 3-20)

Monster Theory

  1. Thesis I. The Monster’s Body Is a Cultural Body (4)
  2. Thesis II. The Monster Always Escapes (4)
  3. Thesis III. The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis (6)
  4. Thesis IV. The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference (7)
  5. Thesis V. The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible (12)
  6. Thesis VI. Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire (16)
  7. Thesis VII. The Monster Stands at the Threshold . . . of Becoming (20)

In groups, develop a list of the important points, lessons, takeaways, and examples that we need to understand in order to understand the thesis. Write a short summary explaining the points of the thesis. Make sure you label which thesis you are writing about. This is very important because we will be using monster theory to write the last two essays in the course. The better we understand the theory, the better we will be able to apply it.

Thesis I. The Monster’s Body Is a Cultural Body

  • Each culture will produce their own monsters and their own versions of monsters. “The monstrous body is pure culture” (4).
  • The monsters is born as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment, a time, a feeling, and a place. A monster will always change because culture changes, our fears and beliefs are always changing (4).
  • The monster signifies something other than itself: it is a displacement, it inhabits the gap between when it was created and it is received, to be born again (4).