Monstrous Manifestations: Realities and the Imaginings of the Monster [1 ed.] 9781848882027, 9789004372306

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Monstrous Manifestations

At the Interface Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard Dr Ken Monteith Advisory Board James Arvanitakis Katarzyna Bronk Jo Chipperfield Ann-Marie Cook Peter Mario Kreuter S Ram Vemuri

Simon Bacon Stephen Morris John Parry Karl Spracklen Peter Twohig Kenneth Wilson

An At the Interface research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/ The Evil Hub ‘Monsters and the Monstrous’

2013

Monstrous Manifestations: Realities and the Imaginings of the Monster

Edited by

Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska and Karen Graham

Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087

ISBN: 978-1-84888-202-7 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.

Table of Contents Introduction Karen Graham and Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska Part 1

Monstrosity Undercover: The Changing Face of the Monster ‘No One Mourns the Wicked’: On the Nature of Evil and Monstrosity in Gregory Maguire’s The Wicked Years Series Karen Graham

Part 2

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Muslim Monsters / American Heroes: Sleeper Cell and Homeland as the New Face of Fear Teresa Cutler-Broyles

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Dexter: Psychopathic Monster or Rational Response to Bewildering Modernity? Abby Bentham

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Will the Real Monster Please Stand Up?: Who Is the Monster in the Land of Monsters? Simon Bacon

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Redrawing the Map: Spaces and Dimensions of Monstrosity Grendel: Boundaries of Flesh and Law Almudena Nido Haunted Communities: The Greek Vampire or the Uncanny at the Core of Nation Construction Álvaro García Marín Thing without Form: Peter Ackroyd’s Monstrous City Marta Komsta F(r)iends in Low Places: Monstrous Identities in Contemporary Esotericism William Redwood

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Part 3

Part 4

Frankenstein Revisited: Incarnations of a Meta-Monster Destroyer and Preserver: Monstrous Intertextuality in Watchmen Brittany Reid

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Monster: Anxiety of the Human: A Study of the Two Novels of Doris Lessing Sivakamasundari Arumugam

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Postmodern Potencies: Interrogating the Monstrous Sign in Contemporary Society Janhavi Mittal

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The Angst of Reproduction and the Monstrous Offspring The Roots of All Evil: William March’s The Bad Seed and the Human Propensity for Violence Jen Baker Fish You Can’t Leave Behind: Deep Ones and Other Creatures as Symbols of Corruption in the Narratives of H. P. Lovecraft Juan Luis Pérez de Luque The Monstrous Hermaphroditic Clone as Backward Progress: A Reading of Ralf Isau’s Thriller Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer Angelika Baier Monstrosising Infertility: Supernatural Barren Females in the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska

Part 5

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Performing the Monster: Masks and Personas Erik’s Effects: The Phantom, the Gesamtkunstwerk and the Monstrosity of Spectacle Ivan Phillips

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The Dark Defender: Dexter and Making Heroes out of Serial Killers Joanna Ioannidou

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A Bad Romance: Lady Gaga and the Return of the Divine Monster Lise Dilling-Hansen

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Introduction: Monsters within and Beyond Karen Graham and Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska Depictions of monsters surround us. Contemporary society is awash with representations of the abject, the abnormal and the horrific in a variety of different art forms. Vampires have become objects of teenage infatuation, while zombies stalk the adult imagination so profoundly that the British government issued a response to an inquiry from a member of the public on the preparedness of the Ministry of Defence for a zombie apocalypse. 1 A cursory search for images of the monster runs the gamut from Boris Karloff’s portrayal of Frankenstein’s creature 2 to Mike, Sully and Boo from Disney’s Monsters Inc. 3 While this demonstrates one understanding of the monstrous - that defined by outward appearance, when we also take into account images like the 2003 film Monster, 4 which features Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning depiction of female serial killer Aileen Wuornos, this distinctive characteristic begins to lose its certainty. If monstrosity can be hidden inside the human, as in the figure of the murderer, then discerning the monster becomes much more complex. Naturally, the omnipresence of the monstrous is by no means typical only to contemporary popular culture. From Anglo-Saxon charms to ward against sudden pain being conceptualised as elf-shot, through sailors relaying stories of the Kraken, to the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, humanity has been casting all of its deepest fears into the monstrous mould. As articulated by Jeffrey J. Cohen, D

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anxiety manifests itself symptomatically as a cultural fascination with monsters - a fixation that is born of the twin desire to name that which is difficult to apprehend and to domesticate [...] that which threatens. 5 D

This angst is also well illustrated by the monstrous races that adorned the unknown territories at the edges of medieval maps. Further to resettling the unfamiliar into the realms of the monstrous, these images display also the evolutionary potential of the monster. The Sciapods, one footed people believed to inhabit Ethiopia and shade themselves from the sun by lying on their backs with their large foot in the air, are possibly the most colourful example as today they are better known as the dufflepuds from C. S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 6 The chapters of this volume trace this evolution of fear and desire. Monstrous Manifestations: Realities and Imaginings of the Monster encompass research that developed from the 10th Global Conference Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, held in Oxford in September 2012. The first section of the volume, Monstrosity Undercover: The Changing Face of the Monster, toys with the concept of the monster in disguise, and D

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__________________________________________________________________ highlights the ambiguity of both the monstrous and the human. Monstrosity Undercover brings together four chapters that interrogate the hazy boundaries between good and evil, emphasising the volatile, bewildering and, ultimately, incomprehensible qualities of these categories. In the opening chapter, ‘“No One Mourns the Wicked”: On the Nature of Evil and Monstrosity in Gregory Maguire’s The Wicked Years Series,’ Karen Graham investigates the construction of the monstrous in Gregory Maguire’s series The Wicked Years. Through her focus on the ambiguous character of Elphaba, the author reflects on the nature of evil, exposing the false practices of oversimplifying and politicising this category by externalisation and othering. Graham leads the reader into the liminal space between male and female, human and monster and, ultimately, the Familiar and the Uncanny occupied by the Witch, thus demonstrating the complexity and significance of perspective for the understanding of evil and goodness. The allegedly clear dichotomy of these categories is further challenged by Teresa Cutler-Broyles through her analysis of the American cinematic representations of Muslims. With the protagonists of the TV series Sleeper Cell and Homeland as the focus of her chapter, the author reveals the fears of modern society related to the shifting meanings of hero and villain in a world where the two constantly swap places. The terror of contemporary monsters, as CutlerBroyles aptly observes in ‘Muslim Monsters / American Heroes: Sleeper Cell and Homeland as the New Face of Fear,’ consists in their inconspicuousness and deceitful resemblance to ‘normal,’ or even heroic, which results in the blurred boundaries between good and evil. These boundaries become eventually effaced within the Dexter novels and TV series examined by Abby Bentham. In her chapter ‘Dexter: Psychopathic Monster or Rational Response to Bewildering Modernity?’ the author discusses the process of renegotiating the traditional notions of right and wrong in contemporary society and culture. By bringing to the fore the interdependence of the heroic and the beastly in the protagonist of Jeff Lindsay’s novels, Bentham explores the changing concepts of humanity and morality in the fast-paced, unstable, bewildering modern world. She also positions Dexter within the broader contemporary trend of the romanticisation of the monster figure. Concluding this section Simon Bacon asks, ‘Will the Real Monster Please Stand Up?’ as he peers into the other-world of the monster in its natural habitat. Considering texts where the line between human and monster is not simply blurred, but reversed, the author questions the validity of monstrous constructions based on appearance. He examines the idea that acting in accordance with one’s nature in films such as I Am Legend, Predators and Daybreakers renders the monsters more human, and reveals the truly disturbing figure of the human monster. By pointing to the way in which humanity and monstrosity interweave in the personas of the chosen protagonists, the author provides a

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__________________________________________________________________ stimulating insight on the ductile and volatile meanings of the notions of ‘human’ and ‘monstrous.’ In the following section, Redrawing the Map: Spaces and Dimensions of Monstrosity, monstrous places come into view. Combining analysis of space and identity, the authors call on the earliest monsters of Old English epic and the vampires of ancient Greece before heading to modern, monstrous London and then ending at the inter-dimensional landscape of contemporary esotericism. Opening this section, Almudena Nido’s chapter ‘Grendel: Boundaries of Flesh and Law’ visits one of the earliest narratives in English. Inspecting the notion of community identity being articulated by those ostracised as monstrous, Nido considers Grendel as the one who both establishes and transgresses the physical and legal boundaries of the community. Key to her exploration is the Anglo-Saxon Hall as the physical representation of the community and the legal structure which supports it. Her chapter investigates the implications of the monster constructed as ‘out there’ trespassing on the safe space of ‘here.’ The concept of the monster as a crucial aspect in the construction of community is expanded upon in ‘Haunted Communities: The Greek Vampire or the Uncanny at the Core of Nation Construction’ by Álvaro García Marín. The author gives voice to a collection of previously neglected Greek vampire texts from the nineteenth century in an effort to understand the reasons for the effacement of the Greek vrykolokas from the Greek national identity. Perceived now as an idyllic holiday destination for Europe’s youth culture, the author considers the haunting presence of the vrykolokas that renders this construction inherently unstable. The journey through monstrous places is continued by Marta Komsta, in ‘Thing without Form: Peter Ackroyd’s Monstrous City,’ with the intimate connection between the monstrous and the urban as the centrepiece of her chapter. Analysing the construction of an other-London, the author surveys three novels by Peter Ackroyd with reference to the relationship that develops between the abject protagonist and the city itself. This relationship reveals the schism inherent in Ackroyd’s characters, showing the human at the centre of the city and the monster on the periphery. In the last chapter of this section, ‘F(r)iends in Low Places: Monstrous Identities in Contemporary Esotericism,’ William Redwood ventures into the deepest, infernal dimensions of the Western esotericism, looking at the monstrous intersections between physical locations and metaphysical spaces. Illuminating the esoteric constructions of the other realms, Redwood highlights how these conform to the binaries of high/low, right/left, white/black, further arguing that such delineations are not as clear cut as critics, and proponents, of these binaries would like to believe. The third section of the volume, Frankenstein Revisited: Incarnations of a Meta-Monster, gives testament to the continuing relevance and influence of Mary Shelly’s iconic monster narrative. Fastening together chapters from three authors

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__________________________________________________________________ who each parley with Shelly’s astonishing offspring in the form of new texts, Frankenstein Revisited brings its meta-monster back to life within the new, contemporary spheres of literature, film and art. Proving that Frankenstein is still relevant even in unexpected places, Brittany Reid utilises the metaphor of building the monster to explore the intertextuality of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. Incorporating Barthesian and Foucauldian theoretical frameworks on authorship, in ‘Destroyer and Preserver: Monstrous Intertextuality in Watchmen,’ Reid exploits this extreme - even monstrous - example of intertextuality to investigate the nature of authorial intent and the creative process of literature. Continuing with this thread, Sivakamasundari Arumugam presents the case for considering Doris Lessing’s character of Ben, the ‘abnormal’ protagonist in The Fifth Child and Ben in the World, as the literary descendent of Frankenstein’s creature. Combining perspectives from disability studies with a critique of institutionalism and the normative body as promoted by science, the author of ‘Monster: Anxiety of the Human: A Study of the Two Novels of Doris Lessing’ highlights the social commentary embedded in Lessing’s novels. The final stitch in this monstrous section is provided by Janhavi Mittal’s ‘Postmodern Potencies: Interrogating the Monstrous Sign in Contemporary Society.’ Once again using Shelly’s Frankenstein as a lens, Mittal focuses on the issues surrounding the representation of the non-normative body. Her research, informed by disability studies, examines the representations of bodily difference in Frankenstein and its literary progeny in Chris Carter’s X Files episode ‘The Postmodern Prometheus’ and Shelly Jackson’s hypertext Patchwork Girl. Concluding this section, the author demonstrates the true power of the metamonster to return from the dead. The fourth part of the volume, The Angst of Reproduction and the Monstrous Offspring, sheds light on the social and cultural anxieties associated with the issue of reproduction and the figure of the child. Reaching back to the past and ahead into the future, the chapters in this section draw on literary examples of monstrous progenies and infertile beings in order to unveil the social and cultural meanings of childhood and motherhood, as well as the fear of miscegenation, sterility and nonsexual, scientific reproductive technologies. The section opens with ‘The Roots of All Evil: William March’s The Bad Seed and the Human Propensity for Violence’ by Jen Baker, who focuses on the character of the juvenile murderer. Examining both literary and real-life instances of child-killers, with the sadistic protagonist of William March’s The Bad Seed and the authentic case of murderous Mary Bell as focal points, the author confronts and disrupts traditional Western discourse of the pure and innocent child figure. Moreover, Baker includes into her analysis the concepts of childhood, beauty, whiteness and femininity - only to dispute their well-established cultural and social connections to the notion of goodness.

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__________________________________________________________________ The fear of the ‘bad seed’ is further exploited by Juan Luis Pérez de Luque in his account of the monstrous beings in the chosen narratives of H. P. Lovecraft. In his chapter ‘Fish You Can’t Leave Behind: Deep Ones and Other Creatures as Symbols of Corruption in the Narratives of H. P. Lovecraft’ the author looks at the literary examples of miscegenation between human and monsters - and the deadly consequences of such - identifying them as the manifestation of Lovecraft’s own anxieties of racial degeneration induced by the influx of immigrants. Pérez de Luque pays particular attention to the writer’s fixation on the past interpreted as the space that holds the darkest secrets of humanity in terms of blood and lineage corruption. The angst of reproduction and the meanings of time are also explored by Angelika Baier, in ‘The Monstrous Hermaphroditic Clone as Backward Progress: A Reading of Ralf Isau’s Thriller Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer,’ which offers a thought-provoking study of the literary character of the hermaphroditic clone. Using the Ralf Isau’s thriller Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer as a lens for her analysis, the author investigates modern society’s doubts (and hopes) evoked by the new, the potential and the unpredictable. Baier places particular emphasis on the interweaving of the monstrous, the divine and the human in the figure of the hermaphroditic clone, and poses questions about the meaning of death, binary gender system and (non)sexual reproduction. In the closing chapter of this section, the eponymous angst returns in the literary conceptualisation of infertile women as monsters. Focusing on the female vampires and shape-shifters of the renowned Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska contemplates the centrality of reproductive capacities, or the lack of them, to the understanding of female humanity and monstrosity in these novels. By drawing a parallel between the barren protagonists of Twilight and monstrous sterile women of both ancient and medieval times, the author of ‘Monstrosising Infertility: Supernatural Barren Females in the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer’ reflects upon the persistence and the omnipresence of the monstrosised female infertility in the cultural history of the world. The concluding part of the volume, Performing the Monster: Masks and Personas, is primarily concerned with monstrous camouflage and the process of masking or presenting the liminal figure of the humanised monster / monstrosised human. With different literary, cinematic and artistic creations as the centrepieces of their analysis, these chapters delve into the processes of (un)problematising the non-normative body and the exploration of the multilayer construction of the three protagonists in whom, once again, the human and the monstrous become intertwined. In the initial chapter of this section, ‘Erik’s Effects: The Phantom, the Gesamtkunstwerk and the Monstrosity of Spectacle,’ Ivan Phillips considers the figure and the creations of Erik the Opera Ghost, Gaston Leroux’s protagonist from

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__________________________________________________________________ The Phantom of the Opera. A horror to look at with his deformed face, Erik builds an underground dwelling for himself, a place where he could hide his hideous appearance and sate both his artistic genius and monstrous instincts. Informed by the theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk, Phillips interprets the Opera Ghost’s legacy of the abundance, dread and wonder as a metaphor for the traps and marvels of the elusive, unsettling modernity and its mass-culture spectacle. In the second chapter, ‘The Dark Defender: Dexter and Making Heroes out of Serial Killers’ Joanna Ioannidou returns to the ambiguous character of Dexter. The author positions his monstrous traits not as an obstacle but as an ultimate reason for audience’s acceptance of the protagonist. Through the questioning of the conflicting presentations of Dexter as monster and defender, Ioannidou probes the moral boundaries of contemporary society - clearly expandable and even permeable when confronted with the modern world’s perils. A psychopathic murderer elevated to the status of a hero, and the audience’s readiness to both accept and absolve his monstrous actions, testify anew to the fragility and vagueness of the border between human and monster. In the final chapter of the volume, ‘A Bad Romance: Lady Gaga and the Return of the Divine Monster,’ Lise Dilling-Hansen revisits the idea of the intimate connection between the dreadful and the beautiful. Investigating the meanings of the female sexualised, objectified and monstrosised body in Lady Gaga’s performances, the author provides an intriguing account of the unconventional, non-normative bodily discourse of extraordinarity, beauty, monstrosity and empowerment of women constructed by the artist. In a perfect conclusion of the volume’s reflections, Dilling-Hansen warns the reader that those who cast aside the extraordinary and the monstrous risk becoming ‘the freaks standing outside the [...] door.’ 7 Monstrous Manifestations bursts that door open and ventures into the monster’s terrain. Consorting with witches, vampires, shape-shifters, clones and hybrids, and acquainting with killers, deformed creatures and beings undefined, the authors daringly follow the monsters coming out of their traditional lairs and colonising the new and constantly expanding social, cultural, psychological and political spaces. Journey with them as they stalk the multifarious and often opaque incarnations of the monstrous that reveal both the manifest and the clandestine anxieties of the human psyche. D

Notes 1

Sam Marsden, ‘Britain Is Well Prepared to Fight Apocalyptic Zombie Invasion’, The Telegraph, December 26, 2012, accessed January 12, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9721072/Britain-iswell-prepared-to-fight-apocalyptic-zombie-invasion.html#. H

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Francis Edward Faragoh and Garret Ford, Frankenstein, dir. James Whale (USA: Universal Pictures, 2003), DVD. 3 Daniel Gerson and Andrew Stanton, Monsters Inc., dir. Peter Docter, David Silverman and Lee Unkrich (USA: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2002), DVD. 4 Patty Jenkins, Monster, dir. Patty Jenkins (USA: Prism Leisure Corporation, 2005), DVD. 5 Jeffrey J. Cohen, ‘Preface: In a Time of Monsters’, in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey J. Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), viii. 6 C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, illustr. Paul Baynes (London: Harper Collins Children’s Books, 2010), 187. 7 Lise Dilling-Hansen, ‘A Bad Romance: Lady Gaga and the Return of the Divine Monster’, in the present volume, 186.

Bibliography Cohen, Jeffrey J. ‘Preface: In a Time of Monsters’. In Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey J. Cohen, vii–xiii. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Dilling-Hansen, Lise. ‘A Bad Romance: Lady Gaga and the Return of the Divine Monster’. In Monstrous Manifestations: Realities and the Imaginings of the Monster, edited by Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, and Karen Graham, 181– 188. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013. Lewis, C. S. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Illustrated by Paul Baynes. London: Harper Collins Children’s Books, 2010. Marsden, Sam. ‘Britain is Well Prepared to Fight Apocalyptic Zombie Invasion.’ The Telegraph, December 26, 2012. Accessed January 12, 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9721072/Britain-iswell-prepared-to-fight-apocalyptic-zombie-invasion.html#. H

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Filmography Faragoh, Francis Edward, and Garret Ford. Frankenstein. Directed by James Whale. USA: Universal Pictures, 2003. DVD.

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__________________________________________________________________ Gerson, Daniel, and Andrew Stanton. Monsters Inc. Directed by Peter Docter, David Silverman, and Lee Unkrich. USA: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2002. DVD. Jenkins, Patty. Monster. Directed by Patty Jenkins. USA: Prism Leisure Corporation, 2005. DVD.

Part 1 Monstrosity Undercover: The Changing Face of the Monster

‘No One Mourns the Wicked’: On the Nature of Evil and Monstrosity in Gregory Maguire’s The Wicked Years Series Karen Graham Abstract By rewriting L. Frank Baum’s early twentieth century Oz tales, Gregory Maguire in his The Wicked Years series of dystopian fantasy novels explores the characters and spaces that occupy the margins of the original tales and also, in part, the film. This shift in focus from the familiar child protagonist of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz incorporates much of the imagery of both the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz and the original Baum tales. The expanded role of the Wicked Witch of the West character leads to discourse on the nature of evil within the novel. Oz offers an alternative America in all three manifestations of the world depicted in literature and on screen. Maguire utilises the various inconsistencies in Baum’s tales and the alterations made for the 1939 film to build the landscape and inhabitants of Oz into a complex world populated by beasts and creatures that would more usually be considered monstrous. This chapter proposes to examine the way in which the appropriation of ‘wicked’ characters, such as the Witch, develops the discourse on the construction of the monstrous within a society where the line between the real and the uncanny is undefined. Key Words: Monstrous, uncanny, dystopia, Gregory Maguire, reimagining, fairytale, witch, wicked, fantasy, Wizard of Oz. ***** ‘Evil’s an incarnated character, an incubus or succubus. It’s an other. It’s not us.’ 1 The opening chapter of Elisabeth Bronfen’s seminal work on death and femininity, Over Her Dead Body, reflects on the frequency of representations of the dead female body in art, noting that these images were ‘so prevalent in eighteenth and nineteenth century European culture that by the middle of the latter century this topos was already dangerously hovering on the periphery of cliché.’ 2 The same could be said of the recent vogue for reimagining and reclaiming myths and fairy tales. The prominence of novels spanning various genres and styles is a testament to the sticking power of such re-worked myths. One popular author who appropriates myth is the American fantasist Gregory Maguire. His novels show an enthusiastic and determined commitment to the rewriting, revision and appropriation of mythic narratives for a contemporary audience. His adult novels, while all containing some element of fantasy, engage with a wide range of myths and utilise different writing styles. The most popular and iconic is his first novel.

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‘No One Mourns the Wicked’

__________________________________________________________________ Written in 1995, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West marks the beginning of Maguire’s re-envisioning of the Oz myth in his The Wicked Years series of four novels. This version of the Oz myth has proved to be so iconic that it has already spawned its own reimagining in the form of the 2003 Broadway and West End musical Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz. Maguire’s repositioning of the maligned Wicked Witch as the myth’s central character is key to the appeal of these texts. This chapter will discuss the nature of evil presented by the discourse within the novel and the construction of the Witch as a monstrous child who may or may not develop into an evil adult. Before turning to this scene, however, it is necessary to give some contextualisation of Maguire’s reimagined Oz and the basis for examining these texts as constructing a new evil identity. While I am not a strong proponent of literary criticism led by authorial biography, I recognise that Maguire’s work is not exceptionally well known, and that some biographical scenery may aid the analysis of these texts. Prior to the publication of his first adult novel in 1995, Gregory Maguire was a well-established author and critic of children’s literature. He was a co-founder of Children’s Literature New England while also teaching at the Centre for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College. As both a researcher and a writer of stories for young people, he surprisingly turned to adult novels, and proved most successful. Wicked was a marked departure for Maguire in terms of content and audience, with the more adult themes he envisaged for the story dictating the necessary change in readership. Maguire’s motivations for this departure are well documented in interviews, and bear a closer examination in the context of this chapter: I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler? I caught myself ready to have a fully-formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler - what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime. I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad. I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler, but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times. But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked

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__________________________________________________________________ Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. 3 The construction of Elphaba as a character is tied into her conception as evil. In ‘Wicked? It’s Not Easy Being Green,’ Kevin Durand identifies this conception of evil, in terms of the actions of an individual, as one of perspective. He points out that, with more information and new perspective, perhaps the initial intuitions about who is good, who is evil, and who is to blame, and why they are so perceived, become somewhat less clear, somewhat more muddied. 4 As indicated by the subtitle of the novel, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Maguire’s version of Oz is significantly pre-Dorothy. Indeed, the title sounds more like that of a biography than a novel. This is reflected in the structure of the text as it is divided into sections based on major events in Elphaba’s life, despite detailing general social and political affairs in the history of Oz as well as those relevant to the protagonist’s existence. These connotations of an expose telling the truth about the Wicked Witch are picked up on and expanded in the 2003 musical adaptation written by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz. This is in keeping with Maguire’s agenda as outlined, and would seem to support Durand’s statement that the understanding and construction of both good and evil is a matter of perspective. Maguire’s Oz retains the geography of Baum’s conception of the land with four countries at the four points of the compass and the Emerald City in the centre both politically and physically. It also expands the map somewhat by adding more detail and complexity. A full chart of Maguire’s alternative Oz is included in the final novel in the series, Out of Oz. Baum continually added to his original simple map from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as the series of Oz stories progressed, and new lands beyond the original countries were ventured to by the central characters. Maguire’s Oz displays more careful attention to realistic geography than Baum’s, and some of the more obviously comic place names are dropped. The revision of the name of Winkie Country by Maguire to The Vinkus is an example of how small changes take on much greater significance in Maguire’s alternative, and much more adult, depiction of Oz. Winkie, the reader learns, is a slang term for the people from The Vinkus and reflects Oz’s colonial history and the prevailing attitudes of the elite and ruling class to the indigenous populations to the West and South of the Emerald City. The Oz represented here is neither cartoon-like in its simplicity nor othered to our own world as in previous incarnations - it is not elsewhere. It is not the other world of adventure from which the hero returns alive and changed for the better.

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‘No One Mourns the Wicked’

__________________________________________________________________ This is a distinct departure from the previous depictions of Oz in literature and in film, and reflects the change in perspective that the novel offers. At first reading, Maguire’s novel seems to be about humanising the Wicked Witch, as evidenced by the biographical structure of the text. Are our ideas about what is and is not monstrous all about perspective? Had we not landed in Oz with Dorothy’s house on top of a Witch proclaimed Wicked by people who sing and dance at her demise (abnormal, perhaps even monstrous behaviour in any other context)? Would we consider her sister quite so sinister and frightening? Durand argues exactly so: The time-honoured movie stands before us as a series of firstimpressions, a maker of intuitions and a shaper of feelings. […] Maguire suggests that the movie audience has come onto the scene, with Dorothy and her house, well into the telling of a very complicated story; a story incomplete on a mere viewing. 5 The Prologue introduces the reader to this perspective. We find ourselves in the tree with the Wicked Witch looking on at the yellow brick road and its disparaging travellers. Indeed, it could easily be a scene straight from the 1939 film at first glance: The Witch tucked her broom under her arm. Crablike and quiet, she scuttled down a little at a time, until she was a mere twenty feet above them. Wind moved the dangling tendrils of the tree. The Witch stared and listened. […] “Of course, to hear them tell it, it is the surviving sister who is the crazy one,” said the Lion. “What a Witch. Psychologically warped; possessed by demons. Insane. Not a pretty picture.” “She was castrated at birth,” replied the Tin Woodman calmly. “She was born hermaphroditic, or maybe entirely male.” […] “She was deprived of a mother’s love, is how I’ve heard it. She was an abused child. She was addicted to medicine for her skin condition.” “She has been unlucky in love,” said the Tin Woodman, “like the rest of us.” The Tin Woodman paused and placed his hand on the centre of his chest, as if in grief. “She’s a woman who prefers the company of other women,” said the Scarecrow, sitting up. “She’s the spurned lover of a married man.” “She is a married man.” The Witch was so stunned that she nearly lost her grip on the branch. The last thing she had ever cared for was gossip. Yet she

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__________________________________________________________________ had been out of touch for so long that she was astonished at the vigorous opinions of these random nobodies. 6 The effect of this prologue is twofold. First, the familiarity of the scene reminds the reader of the ‘original’ version of the story and the moral perspective that this version offers. The Wicked Witch is set apart from the other characters, hiding in the trees. Her movements are described as ‘crablike,’ and clearly reflect those of Margaret Hamilton in her portrayal of the Wicked Witch in the film. However, as the scene progresses, the second effect - that of subverting the perspective of the familiar previous narrative - is discernible in the discussion between the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Lion. The depiction of Dorothy’s naive companions gossiping about the gender and sexual orientation of the Wicked Witch is simultaneously comical and unnerving. This speculation and the discomfort the reader feels on behalf of the Witch signal the points of departure from both Baum’s narrative and the film adaptation. The Prologue then represents a border where the previous incarnations of the Witch, and therefore of evil, are left behind. This is the border between ignorance and knowledge: once the reader crosses the border of the Prologue and enters the text proper, the Witch will be named. She will have a genealogy, a story of her own. The apparent humanising of the Witch suggested by the biographical-like title and the practicalities of giving her a name, a mother and a father are undermined from the very beginning by her obvious monstrosity at birth. While a distinct shock to the midwife and the mother Melena, Elphaba’s green skin is very much expected on the part of the reader. Even if we have not seen the 1939 musical, it is on the novel’s cover. While her green skin is enough to set her apart as Other, her monstrosity as a child manifests in her being unnaturally quiet and born with a full set of sharp teeth - teeth that she promptly puts to good use when she bites off the finger of one of the women who deliver her after the woman suggests that they should kill the child. It is also in this scene that Elphaba’s gender is rendered ambiguous. Although defined as female throughout the rest of the novel, there is some confusion at the birth as to whether the child is male or female. She is thought to be male at first, but a thorough post-birth cleaning appears to reveal a definitive female gender. However, when Elphaba bites off the midwife’s finger, this is laughingly characterised by the other women as the child stealing a symbolic penis from her. This gender ambiguity is transported to that scene on the yellow brick road when the Tin Woodman recounts that she was castrated at birth after having been born hermaphroditic or perhaps entirely male. This birth scene is a particularly uncanny instance in the novel and it sets up Elphaba’s green body as abject. She is ambiguously gendered and monstrously toothed. Bronfen’s explanation of the dead female body depicted in eighteenth and nineteenth century art as an empty sign, a point of liminality and potentiality is, I argue, relevant to the depiction of Elphaba’s green female body by the retained

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__________________________________________________________________ determinism of her fate. We know before she is born that she will die at Dorothy’s hand, and much of the narrative can be viewed as precursor to this defining point of death. This calls to mind Ivan Philips’ chapter in this collection and his discussion of Leroux’s Opera Ghost, Erik. Philips notes that Erik’s skin is the ‘locus of manifest ambiguity,’ 7 a description which could be applied to Elphaba’s green skin as it is to Erik’s corpse-like appearance. Throughout the novel the Witch moves back and forward across the border between the states of abject monster and actualised subject. It is with this backdrop of the monstrous child and the liminal adult body that the text engages with congruent discourse on the nature of evil linked to the monstrous through Elphaba’s self-proclaimed Wickedness. The main body of this discussion takes place at a dinner party to which Elphaba has been invited. One of the definitions of evil which stands out immediately is that offered by the artist. This definition is particularly monstrous: ‘I think it’s a presence, not an absence […] Evil’s an incarnated character, an incubus or a succubus. It’s an other. It’s not us.’ 8 This calls to mind Fusseli’s famous painting The Nightmare and indicates a construction of evil that is external, Other and physically as well as morally monstrous. It is not coincidental that this definition, offered by an artist, is the closest to that precipitated Maguire’s exploration of the nature of evil. It is this very formation that is questioned by Elphaba: “Not even me?” said the Witch, playing the part more vigorously than she expected. “A self-confessed murderer?” “Oh go on with you,” said the artist, “we all of us show ourselves in our best light. That’s just normal vanity.” 9 The quick, dismissive retort from the unnamed artist is a reminder not to take Elphaba too seriously. To do so would be detrimental to the narrative which has emphasised her humanity as much as her monstrosity. It is also a subtle reminder that the murder to which she is confessing is not actually a murder at all. At most, Elphaba’s crime could be said to be desecration of a corpse as she finds herself too late to finally kill Madame Morrible. After this the discussion ceases to be connected to individual definitions of evil, and becomes a disembodied cacophony of contradictory statements brought to a definitive conclusion by Elphaba: “The real thing about evil,” said the Witch at the doorway, “isn’t any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It’s like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, far as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The paradox of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.” 10

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__________________________________________________________________ The artist’s monstrous definition of evil is alluded to through the reference to the hyper-monstrous dragon. Evil, like Maguire’s construction of the Wicked Witch, is inherently ambiguous. It is a liminal entity which is neither wholly one thing nor another. This is the prevailing construction of evil as defined by the Witch protagonist. The Witch is a stand in for the demonised political Other, for Saddam Hussein at least, if not Hitler. The true nature of evil represented by Maguire is that evil is perpetuated by an attempt to simplify and confine what we think of as Other. In the guise of fantasy, Maguire is making a hard-hitting political point: evil is not only situated in the Other but also in the self. Propaganda, whether it be Ozian gossip about the Wicked Witch of the West or newspaper headlines that demonise the figure head of opposing political ideologies, is the narrowing of focus and the singularity of perspective that lead to easy scapegoating. Evil is complex - and paradoxical.

Notes 1

Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (New York: Harper, 1995), 474. 2 Elisabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 3. 3 Gregory Maguire, ‘Author Q&A’, gregorymaguire.com, accessed May 22, 2012, http://www.gregorymaguire.com/about/about_qanda.html. 4 Kevin Durand, ‘Wicked? It’s Not Easy Being Green’, in The Wizard of Oz and Philosophy: Wicked Wisdom of the West, eds. Randall E. Auxier and Phillip S. Seng, Popular Culture and Philosophy Series, Vol. 37 (Chicago: Open Court, 2008), 316. 5 Ibid., 316-318. 6 Maguire, Wicked, 1-2. 7 Ivan Philips, ‘Erik’s Effects: The Phantom, the Gesamtunstwerk and the Monstrosity of Spectacle’, in the present volume, 167. 8 Maguire, Wicked, 474. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 475.

Bibliography Bronfen, Elisabeth. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992).

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__________________________________________________________________ Durand, Kevin. ‘Wicked? It’s Not Easy Being Green’. In The Wizard of Oz and Philosophy: Wicked Wisdom of the West, edited by Randall E. Auxier, and Phillip S. Seng, 315–330. Popular Culture and Philosophy Series, Vol. 37. Chicago: Open Court, 2008. Maguire, Gregory. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. New York: Harper, 1995. —––. ‘Author Q&A’. gregorymaguire.com 2005. Accessed May 22, 2012. http://www.gregorymaguire.com/about/about_qanda.html. Philips, Ivan. ‘Erik’s Effects: The Phantom, the Gesamtunstwerk and the Monstrosity of Spectacle’. In Monstrous Manifestations: Realities and Imaginings of the Monster, edited by Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, and Karen Graham, 163–172. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013. Karen Graham is a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen. Her thesis focuses on the use of myth and fantasy in selected writings of Gregory Maguire. Other research interests are the development of the literary vampire and the construction of identity in literature.

Muslim Monsters / American Heroes: Sleeper Cell and Homeland as the New Face of Fear Teresa Cutler-Broyles Abstract Muslims, generally conflated with Arabs, have populated American film since its inception. Drawing on a legacy of European Orientalism, representations of Muslims have both created and fed the stereotypes of the sinister Muslim to be inherently feared - a monster. These monsters have persisted in American film through the waxing and waning of other celluloid villains, and have represented the enemy regardless of storyline or plausibility across genres. Their effectiveness in being villains has varied, yet their monstrosity has been unquestioned and understood as a natural part of Muslim nature. Typically, these monsters lived ‘out there’ and had to travel from their lairs in order to perform their evil deeds. They were easy to identify - by their crazed eyes and unruly hair - when encountered, and although terrifying, they were not terribly resilient. Since September 11, 2001, however, Muslim villains have become adept at blending in. The stereotype is still alive and well in Hollywood movies, but on the small screen Muslims have become slippery and chameleon-like, able to assume the guise of their surroundings. This new skill makes them harder to identify and far more monstrous; in effect, they have become like us, and one could argue in fact that they are us. I discuss this phenomenon as it manifests in two American television shows post-9/11, Sleeper Cell and Homeland, and show how the Muslim monster has shape-shifted from crazed fanatic to coldly efficient sociopath, in lockstep with American foreign policy. When these television representations show the Muslim monster as the boy - or the girl - next door, they become perfect embodiments of the larger fear of the future, and reflect back to us our own monstrosity. Key Words: Muslims, Arabs, monsters, representations, fear, television, Sleeper Cell, Homeland, popular culture, Orientalism. ***** Innumerable studies have been done on the utility of using the Middle East, Islam and Arabs in visual representations for Western audiences; since the birth of film and TV, these representations have been a particularly effective shorthand for evil, for Other, for danger. This shorthand developed as a result of the West’s historical involvement with ‘the Orient’ - an ever-shifting political geography that has variously included what we call now the Middle East, parts of North Africa and sometimes Turkey. 1 What those areas of the world have in common is, of course, Islam. This fear of Islam has been expanded since September 11, and cultivated through exposure to misinformation and inaccurate representations in

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__________________________________________________________________ media, as well as fanned by those in charge of our protection who use it to legitimise the measures taken to ‘protect’ us: wiretapping, searches at airports, collecting emails, our internet usage and information about organisations we belong to or support, ad infinitum. While there has been a concerted effort recently on the part of TV executives to portray Muslims more even-handedly, the representations in Sleeper Cell and Homeland are almost inevitable in the evolution of the Muslim monster from Valentino’s Sheik of the 1920s, through the evil caliphs in 1940s Abbot and Costello movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wild-eyed, crazy-haired nemesis in 1980s True Lies, into quieter, less visible but no less deadly monsters of today - and of the future. In essence, the Other-monster becomes the Sleeper-monster who, in turn, becomes the Hero-monster. The plot of Sleeper Cell focuses on a black man who is an undercover FBI agent and Muslim. These characteristics are significant as he infiltrates a terrorist cell, all of whose members are also Muslim, and as he must make choices that put his values, but never his patriotism, to the test. The hero stays a hero, the enemy is always the enemy. In contrast, the story line in Homeland centres on the efforts of a blonde female CIA agent who is dedicated to protect the U.S. against a terrorist plot, even though she is the only one who believes in its existence. 2 This plot is ephemeral, invisible, essentially evil, and hinges on the protagonist’s and audience’s acceptance of the existence of an ultimate double agent - the American-turned-terrorist. This enemy is not just any American, but an American hero, a soldier. While ostensibly about Americans threatened by Muslims, in actuality these shows are less about the reality of the threat than they are about the way their images of Muslims function; specifically, they are vivid examples of how U.S. identity is constructed in relation to the monsters created through those images. As Slavoj Žižek tells us: Whenever we encounter such a purely evil Outside, we should gather the courage to endorse the Hegelian lesson: in this pure Outside, we should recognize the distilled version of our own essence. 3 This creation of the Muslim monster/other and of a somehow diametrical American identity begins in the opening credits of Sleeper Cell. We hear pseudoMiddle Eastern music as we see the title written in letters shaped to resemble Arabic; the assumption here is that this image, combined with the music, will connect to the title - Sleeper Cell - and play on our pre-existing expectations and fears: Middle East = Arabs = terrorists. The next image is that of minarets, and we simultaneously hear a call to prayer. Again, the image and the sound combine to reinforce what we have already begun to piece together, and our expectations are

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__________________________________________________________________ both satisfied and confounded when the camera pulls back to reveal prison bars and a praying black man. For the American audience, this combination is filled with easy-to-read symbolism. The notion of equating blackness with criminality is deeply embedded in American culture. This adds a twist to the Muslim/terrorism image we have been presented with to this point and makes the perceived ‘monster’ that much more monstrous. When we find out at the end of the first episode that this black Muslim is also our hero, an ex-special operative and an undercover FBI agent, we relax. We dismiss the initial assumptions of which we may not even have been aware, and hold onto the politically correct hope that he is a good man despite his religion. After all, he is an American military man, so, by default - a hero. Our trust is rewarded as he infiltrates the terrorist cell and roots out the real Muslim monsters. The plot of Sleeper Cell could fall into the category of just another terroristthemed suspense drama about Muslims if not for one significant difference - its exposure of a particular kind of enemy, and the fear this generates in the audience. Primed to recognise monsters, we are at first confused, then frightened, and finally horrified when we realise this monster is a different kind of creature than those we are familiar with. Rather than conforming to our expectations - drilled into us by more than one hundred years of film and television - the members of the cell are not wild-eyed fanatics easily picked out in a crowd by their furtive behaviour and darting looks. They are, as stated on the DVD cover, our ‘friends, neighbours, and husbands:’ 4 Tommy, blond, Berkeley-born and raised, works in a bowling alley; Christian, a French playboy, drives a tour bus in Los Angeles; and Ilija Korjenić, an Eastern European, likes to rap and to sing karaoke. The only familiar monstrous trait is the one we have been taught to deem inevitable - they are all Muslim. Yet, because they are not coded as Middle Eastern, we would not take a second look if we passed them on the street, we would not search them at the airport, we would not put them on watch lists. Two cell members do fit our expectations physically - both are Middle Eastern, both have dark hair and dark eyes - but confound us in other ways. One acts just like an everyday American, talking about his daughter and throwing her a birthday party in the park as he plots to pull off the next terrorist attack. The other is the cell leader, a Saudi, and finally we see someone who is ‘appropriately’ fanatical. He talks of jihad and commitment to the cause, and he is coldly psychopathic as he executes a member of his own cell. Yet, in the world at large he passes as a respected Jewish community member and owns a high-profile security company. Season two adds a Mexican-American ex-con and a German woman as additional Muslim monsters/terrorists, and our fear ratchets up a notch. Breaking away from the monster Americans expected, Sleeper Cell marked a watershed moment in American television. 5 No longer were Americans able to take comfort in the belief that the monsters were outside the boundaries, on the periphery and relatively easy to identify. Suddenly, with Sleeper Cell, the monsters

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__________________________________________________________________ became everyday people in our places of worship, our spaces of leisure and our tourist sites. Yet, we could still cling to the belief that ‘they’ were different from ‘us.’ Our hero was an American military man, a soldier, a defender of the country’s morals and values and the lives of its citizens. Most importantly, despite exposure, he maintained his purity and never became the monster he battled. Even their shared religion did not pull him into their darkness. Then, into this relatively stable representation of the Muslim monster entered Showtime’s 2011 series Homeland. As with Sleeper Cell, the conjunction of sound and image in its opening credits for all of season one goes to work on our psyche immediately. It is a montage of sound bites from the real world, featuring presidents past and present decrying terrorism and terrorists, images of the World Trade Center in flames and of various after-effects of terrorism worldwide, combined with screen shots from the fictional world of the show and lines spoken by characters that reinforce the theme. The documentary feel of the opening adds verisimilitude, and the show hooks us immediately, effective in large part due to our conditioned expectations: Muslims are the bad guys, the liars and cheats, the fanatics, the suicide bombers. These opening images for Homeland are reinforced by the most significant line in the pilot episode - ‘An American POW has been turned’ - spoken by Claire Danes’ character, Carrie Matheson. 6 With these words, the monster out there - the Other, the Arab, the terrorist, the Muslim - becomes the monster within. The body, of both the POW and the nation/Homeland, changes into something Other, following a centuries-long tradition of monstrous metamorphosis that is always unpredictable and always terrifying. Typically, when a monster shape-shifts, he or she becomes visibly ‘other.’ That is when we know to be afraid. But when the monster’s transmutation makes him/her look more like us instead of more monstrous, this shape-shifting takes on a darker aspect. When the corruption is of a hero, there is nowhere else to turn. This slippage, from hero to monster, is significant not only in American popular culture, politics and foreign relations, but also in the country’s attitude to the rest of the world. Stephen Asma in his book On Monsters tells us that ‘Demonizing or monstering other groups has […] become part of the cycle of American politics’ and that ‘Seeing other races and ethnicities as monstrous has […] aided much of the international warfare of the twentieth century.’ 7 The revelation that the archetype of the soldier/hero/good guy is easily transmutable into the bad guy, is particularly striking when it takes place in the realm of popular culture. Essentially, the television Muslim monster from Sleeper Cell has evolved, and Homeland has envisioned the next logical step - the hero-monster. Throughout most of season one of Homeland, Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody is the personification of a hero - he is a U.S. soldier, a prisoner of war who has endured

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__________________________________________________________________ torture at the hands of al Qaeda operatives. He is publically upheld as an example of how pure American values can defy and defeat any evil. And yet, is he as pure as he seems? First we find out that he has converted to Islam and this puts a chink in our blind hero-worship, but until he dons the suicide vest, we hold out. After all, Sleeper Cell taught us that heroes can be Muslim. But Brody betrays us, and this betrayal is particularly devastating. We have given him our trust, he is our hero. He is what we most admire; yet, he becomes the Other we most fear. The body - physical, national and political - has been split and the monster has entered through the cracks. He is here and he is us/U.S. This plays havoc with American identity. Who are we if those who look just like us and whom we hold up as pure, heroic embodiments of our own national, cultural and personal values, are in reality the Other that we have been programmed to fear? What do we do when our mediated heroes cross the boundaries, blur into our monsters, and blend into the very fabric of our social identity? Rene Girard tells us that ‘[w]hen differences begin to shift back and forth the cultural order loses its stability.’ 8 When our popular culture offers us heroes who shape-shift so effortlessly into long-familiar monsters, we can see the cultural order destabilising before our eyes. This situation has had interesting - and disturbing - ramifications. One particularly pernicious and dangerous effect is heard daily on conservative radio talk shows across the United States - an increasingly strident xenophobia, specifically the fear of all things Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern. I see this trend as an attempt to push the Muslim/other/monster back to the periphery. To make him (or, rarely, her) once again easily identifiable, to turn him back into the crazed, wild-eyed Muslim terrorist who was so familiar to audiences in the pre-September11 days. Rush Limbaugh, an ultra-conservative, far right wing radio talk show host popular in the U.S., tells us that Islam is: a religion that practices Sharia law; that kills anybody who won’t convert; that holds horrible public executions; cuts off people’s heads in revenge killings with rusty knives and kills their own daughters and wives in honor killings; hates puppies, doesn’t like dogs; invades countries like parasites and refuses to assimilate, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. 9 His hate rants reflect an extreme but not uncommon belief that Muslims’ worldview - as if there was one shared by all Muslims - is fundamentally different from the worldview he himself claims to advocate: the idea that America and Americans are, by definition, none of those things he attaches to Muslims. After all, one of the most important ways of identifying monsters is identifying how they differ from ‘us.’

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__________________________________________________________________ The monstrous characteristics that Limbaugh’s Muslims exhibits are in fact so far removed from us that it seems impossible that we could embody them, could become so monstrous. Yet, this possibility is in fact what the show Homeland hinges on. Sergeant Brody does not simply decide one day while in captivity to become a terrorist and to perform acts of violence against his own country. He has a reason. Unlike our flawed understanding of a Middle Eastern terrorist who is violent and heartless by nature, Nicholas Brody, an American hero turned into a Muslim monster, chooses the path of terror only when an Arab child he loves is killed, along with a large number of other children, by an American drone strike in Syria that is subsequently covered up. This is an intriguing point, a critique of the American military and the American government’s callous actions, and viewers are confounded as a result. If Americans can act like monsters, and our identity can be shaken to such a degree that the most American of American heroes can become something Other, then how real is that American identity in the first place? I believe that what this hero-monster is warning us against is that we have already become - or perhaps, we have always been - what we fear. But as a people long-conditioned to believe in unmitigated American Exceptionalism, we cannot understand this warning, let alone accept it. Consequently, we continue on the same path, projecting those impure and undesirable traits - traits that we suspect having ourselves - onto a surrogate. This act of continued othering, despite such warnings against it, exposes our complicity in both the projection of these traits and our need to form these simple dichotomies of ‘us and them.’ Having created our own monster who fulfils its role with uncanny precision, we destroy it, ridding ourselves of the impurity it represents. We take a deep breath and go about our daily lives, secure in the belief that we have indeed got rid of something ‘out there’ that threatened us, unable to understand that we were its source. This process is on display in Homeland. Implicit in the story line is the reality of the U.S. involvement in the creation of its own monsters. While this critique ran through Sleeper Cell as well, it was the terrorists who spoke it; in Homeland, it is the American hero-monster who makes this connection for us, making our complicity in his transformation explicit. The dangers these monsters warn us against, therefore, are not so much about the violation or transgression of the boundaries between us and them. Instead, these representations of Muslim monsters as not just everyday Americans but the ultraAmericans rupture the illusion that there is any separation at all between the two. Stephen Asma tells us that ‘[p]erceived monsters bring out monstrous reactions.’ 10 When our only response to a monster is to set out, pitchforks in hand, to capture and burn him in effigy, this precludes any other possibility - that of understanding, assimilation or coexistence. We complete our own transformation, becoming the very monster we fear as we throw more fuel on the fire. Thus, the monsters of the future are not out there at all. They are here, and they are us.

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Notes 1

For more information about this process, see Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage: 1st Vintage Books, 1979). For theoretical framework, see Melanie McAlister, Epic Encounters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). See also Jack Shaheen, Reel Bad Arab (New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001) for examples of this phenomenon in American film. 2 Homeland is based on an Israeli TV show, Hatufim, which aired in 2010 on Israel’s Channel 2. With the English-language title Prisoners of War, the series began airing in the UK on Sky Arts in 2012. 3 Slavoj Žižek, ‘The Desert and the Real’, September 17, 2001, accessed August 15, 2012, http://www.lacan.com/zizek-welcome.htm, para. 5. 4 This phrase is paraphrased from the cover of Sleeper Cell’s season one DVD boxed set released by Showtime in 2006. It was written originally as ‘Friends. Neighbours. Husbands.’ 5 This moment was shared in part by the show 24; see e. g. Jennifer Hart Weed, Richard Brian Davis and Ronald Weed, eds., 24 and Philosophy: The World According to Jack (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007); Daniel Pipes, ‘“24” and Hollywood’s Discovery of Radical Islam’, FrontPageMagazine.com, January 6, 2005, accessed January 5, 2013, http://www.danielpipes.org/2332/24and-hollywoods-discovery-of-radical-islam and ‘Muslims pissed at Jack Bauer and 24’, January 18, 2007, accessed January 5, 2013, http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message331902/pg1 for discussion of Muslims as stereotypical villains in 24. For an indication of how Muslim stereotypes began to change see also Souheila Al-Jadda, ‘“Sinister Muslim” Stereotype Fades’, December 14, 2009, accessed January 5, 2013, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2009-12-15column15_ST_U.htm. 6 Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff, ‘Pilot’, Homeland, season 1 episode 1, dir. Michael Cuesta, aired October 2, 2011 (USA: Showtime, 2012), DVD. 7 Stephen Asma, On Monsters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 234. 8 Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1979), 158. 9 Rush Limbaugh’s radio broadcast, September 7, 2010, accessed June 27, 2012, http://webtest1.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_090710/content/01125112.gues t.html. 10 Asma, On Monsters, 239.

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Bibliography Asma, Stephen. On Monsters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Girard, Rene. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1979. McAlister, Melanie. Epic Encounters. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Moretti, Franco. ‘The Dialectic of Fear’. New Left Review 136 (NovemberDecember 1982): 67–85. Accessed October 1, 2012. http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/moretti.html. Said, Edward. Orientalism. Vintage: 1st Vintage Books, 1979. Shaheen, Jack. Reel Bad Arabs. New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001. Turner, Graeme. Film as Social Practice IV. London & New York: Routledge, 2008. Tutt, Daniel. ‘Homeland and the Battle Within’. Huffington Post, March 26, 2012. Accessed August 10, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-tutt/homelandtv_b_1375612.html. Žižek, Slavoj, ‘The Desert and the Real’. September 17, 2001. Accessed August 15, 2012. http://www.lacan.com/zizek-welcome.htm.

Filmography Cameron, James, dir. True Lies. United States: Lightstorm Entertainment, 1994. Cuesta, Michael, Guy Ferland, Daniel Attias, Clark Johnson, and Jeffrey Nachmanoff, dirs. Homeland. Produced by Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Gideon Raff, Chip Johannessen, Alexander Cary, Meredith Stiehm, and Henry Bromell. USA: Showtime Entertainment, 2012. DVD. Gomez, Nick, Guy Ferland, Charles S. Dutton, Clark Johnson, and Leslie Libman, dirs. Sleeper Cell. Produced by Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris, Andrew Barrett, Kath

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__________________________________________________________________ Lingenfelter, Kamran Pasha, and Alexander Woo. USA: Showtime Entertainment, 2006. DVD. Melford, George, dir. The Sheik. United States: Paramount Pictures, 1921. Teresa Cutler-Broyles has a Master’s Degree in Cultural Studies with an emphasis on how literature and media make monsters of Others. She is a PhD candidate in American Cultural Studies focusing on American/Middle East involvement, film studies and performance studies.

Dexter: Psychopathic Monster or Rational Response to Bewildering Modernity? Abby Bentham Abstract Over approximately the last 100 years the figure of the psychopath has become increasingly central to fictional depictions, possibly as a result of humankind’s enduring fascination with narratives of monstrous villainy. Representations have made the transition from depictions of the psychopath as fiendish ‘other,’ such as Dostoyevsky’s Svidrigailov, to modern portrayals of the psychopathic murderer as hero, as portrayed in Jeff Lindsay’s series of Dexter novels. Lindsay offers a unique perspective on this trajectory by placing his psychopath in the central, heroic role, thus subverting traditional morality. This chapter will explore cultural fascination with the psychopath and enquire what the romanticisation - and the audience’s ultimate acceptance - of this figure reveal about cultural responses to transgression within contemporary society. I will focus predominantly on the series of Dexter novels but also examine the popular TV series for evidence of wider cultural trends. Dexter is the embodiment of Kristeva’s notion of the ‘criminal with good conscience [...] the killer who claims he’s a saviour;’ 1 he plumbs deep psychological territory, exploring sadism and conceptions of humanity, yet we accept him, unchallenged, as our hero. His actions are cast not as the indefensible deeds of an unknowable fiend, but as a rational response to a monstrous and bewildering modernity. This phenomenon, I suggest, emanates from the mainstreaming of deviancy in popular culture, a process which leads, ultimately, to the acceptance of characters like Dexter. I will examine this dramatic renegotiation of the rhetoric of ‘evil’ in Lindsay’s novels, exploring the points of congruence and divergence between the books and the TV series to ascertain what they reveal about twenty-first century society. Key Words: Dexter, psychopath, monstrosity, modernity, evil, murder, society, culture. ***** If a society’s interests are revealed in its literature, then wickedness and villainy must be amongst humankind’s most persistent fascinations. Stories of transgression and monstrosity abound, from the earliest surviving works of Old English poetry to the narratives of the modern day. And whilst literary treatments of wrongdoing have changed in keeping with cultural developments, their appeal seems undiminished. Indeed, such is our interest in the darker side of human nature that contemporary popular culture abounds with characters whose actions are illegal and morally wrong, but who are cast as the heroes in the narratives they inhabit.

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__________________________________________________________________ Dexter Morgan, everybody’s favourite serial killer, has become the poster boy for this curiously modern phenomenon, and this chapter will explore the cultural, social and psychological drivers behind the emergence of such a character. Dexter is the hero of a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, and he has also been immortalised in the popular Showtime television series which bears his name. The novels and the series plumb deep psychological territory, exploring sadism and conceptions of humanity. Structurally, Dexter occupies the role of the hero but, as a serial killer who only kills other serial killers, he creates in the reader an unsettling ambivalence as we struggle to decide whether he is a monstrous, murderous psychopath or a heroic avenger bringing justice to the streets of Miami. Dexter clearly is a psychopath; a cold and calculating predator, devoid of the empathy, remorse and self-awareness that are the usual markers of humanity. And his acts are monstrous - he stalks, abducts, tortures, kills and dismembers other human beings. Yet, as Stephanie Green notes, psychological ratification [is not] necessary for the story, since it is the way [Dexter] manipulates our attraction and revulsion as we engage with the subjectivity of a serial killer that is foregrounded. 2 Lindsay’s novels and the subsequent Showtime television series tell their story from the point of view of a killer who is friendly, charismatic, and - gasp! - quite a lot like us. The texts explore the quotidian horrors and injustices of modern life and position the killer as a force for good. The first person narration of Lindsay’s novels and the intradiegetic narration in the series place the reader and viewer in close proximity to Dexter. This encourages us to identify with him, and blurs moral boundaries to the point where the psychopath is no longer an inhuman and shadowy figure but a recognised member of society. Significantly, Dexter’s dual status as psychopathic killer and avenging angel forces us not only to question this peculiar version of humanity, but also to re-evaluate our own conceptions of good and evil. Socially and culturally contingent, conceptions of evil have changed over time, varying from Plato’s view of it as the absence of goodness to Freud’s understanding of evil as a manifestation of the universal destructiveness at the core of human instinctual life. 3 When confronted with a figure like Dexter, who challenges commonly held beliefs about the binary nature of good and evil, we are forced to address our moral and philosophical understanding of evil and consider what place there is within it for Dexter’s particular brand of righteous transgression. Key to this is the consideration of the wider society that Dexter operates in. Miami (referred to by Dexter, both in the books and on screen, as Dahmerland due to its bloodthirsty inhabitants and high unsolved murder rate) exemplifies Hannah Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil. 4 Edward S.

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__________________________________________________________________ Herman explains that the phenomenon relies on ‘normalizing the unthinkable,’ 5 which is ‘the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as “the way things are done.”’ 6 In Dexter’s Miami, violence and aggression are a way of life and this is nowhere more apparent than on the city’s roads, where homicidal drivers pull dangerous manoeuvres whilst screaming and shouting abuse at one another. Such behaviour is commonplace and mundane to the extent that when Dexter loses sight of the Ice Truck Killer’s refrigerated truck during a pursuit, he begins to wonder whether it was actually the killer he had seen or simply a stoked-up delivery boy playing macho head games with the only other driver on the road that night. A Miami thing that happened every day to every driver in our fair city. Chase me, you can’t catch me. Then the uplifted finger, the waved gun, hohum and back to work. 7 With ‘ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts [...] routine [...] and accepted’ 8 in Miami, Dexter’s own behaviour seems somehow less shocking. There is a strong sense that Miami functions as a microcosm for American society as a whole, with its lawless, licentious selfishness merely a symptom of modernity. In Lindsay’s books and the TV show alike, Miami highlights contemporary fears about the breakdown of society, increasing levels of violent crime and the inability of the judicial system to deal effectively with those who offend. As Christiana Gregoriou notes in her thesis on contemporary American crime fiction, ‘there is a tendency to view America as grotesque, as a hellish vision of almost uncontrollable perversion, greed, and weakness.’ 9 The opening scenes of season one’s first episode, ‘Dexter,’ make this explicit - as Dexter drives through the streets of Miami at night, the viewer is presented with a bewildering array of blurred, fastmoving images of decadence and consumption. The elaborate travelling shot works to make the viewer feel as alienated as Dexter, and has the added effect of aligning us more closely with the titular hero, thus increasing our identification with, and empathy for, the killer. This withdrawal from the Miami society reflects the increasingly insular nature of modern life. Widened access to further and higher education along with improved transport have led to increased social mobility (in both a financial and geographical sense), meaning that many people live apart from their extended families. Long working hours and a culture of privacy mean we have less contact with friends, family and neighbours than previous generations. Even technology has had an impact - a telephone in every house (not to mention mobiles in every pocket) equals less face-to-face contact, whilst the advent of SMS and instant messaging has seen us texting rather than speaking to one another. The amazing popularity of social media such as Facebook has heightened the phenomenon - a

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__________________________________________________________________ person may have more than two hundred people in their ‘friends’ list but not see any of them in person over the course of the average week. Additionally, when one considers increasing hours spent in front of the television or playing videogames, it is easy to see how disengagement has become a feature of modern life. Significantly, violence is also a deeply embedded part of modern culture, be it via television programmes, images from the War on Terror or violent videogames; the unthinkable is being normalised in our living rooms on most days of the week. For Christopher Ryan, this is deeply worrying as the numbness to others’ pain, the anti-empathy that allows Dexter to dispassionately kill people [...] is something we all share, to an increasing degree. It’s a numbness that spreads in us as we progressively disengage from tangible life and death in favour of the virtual. 10 Increasing insularity and exposure to heightened levels of violence have affected our empathic abilities. We are inured to the horrors of modern life, ready to accept not only monsters like Dexter but also our own complicity. For many, awareness of this complicity - and the moral ambivalence it creates is a large part of Dexter’s appeal, both on the page and on screen. The texts force us to question our relationship with Dexter and query what our response to him reveals about our own true natures. This places us in an uneasy hinterland, torn between enjoyment of the texts and our understanding that murder is rarely justifiable. We valorise Dexter because he offers a solution to the most monstrous excesses of modern life. He eradicates the worst of the worst; the paedophiles and killers who prey on the weak, vulnerable and innocent, and who have somehow escaped conventional justice. The victims are people like us and our children, and the crimes against them are so heinous, meaningless and vile that Dexter, by contrast, appears as a (our) saviour. This is why Lindsay is so significant when considered in relation to the trajectory of the fictional psychopath - he creates a situation where we can empathise with murder. The vigilante logic leaves Dexter with no choice but to take the law into his own hands. And we agree with this logic - he kills for us. We want him to kill the paedophile priests, the makers of snuff movies and the ruthless, murderous drug dealers as it is our way of fighting back against those who threaten us and our families, and who make us feel powerless in real life. Although we could not condone Dexter’s actions in actuality, within the protective frames provided by the novel or the TV screen they appear as a necessary means of restoring order. Dexter supplies an alternative justice - more effective and more fitting than the state-administered version which appears flaccid by comparison. Dexter is vital, in both senses of the word. His drive towards death makes him seem more full of life; he is not restricted, stultified, as we and his fictional peers are. He is raw, animalistic and somehow very real. He performs a

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__________________________________________________________________ vital function in a floundering, chaotic society where the individual is encouraged to view him- or herself as more important than society as a whole. Yet the paradox of such extreme individualism is that the dominant fictions and supporting structures of society keep the individual constrained, as notions of ‘common decency’ and accepted morality demand that we do not acknowledge, let alone exercise, our darker impulses. Dexter, then, must act for us. Moreover, we do not need to question Dexter’s actions, as he constantly judges himself. Via his frequent references to himself as a monster, he supplies the normative moral response and leaves us to ponder the more nuanced picture of right and wrong that the fictions present. The fact that he is a serial killer, who we mentally encourage and empathise with, can be easily overlooked provided that we focus instead on the texts’ moral framework - the ‘Code of Harry.’ The ‘Code of Harry’ is the set of rules given to Dexter by his foster father. Realising that Dexter’s pathological urge to kill could not be suppressed, Harry decided to channel his son’s impulses for the public good, by ensuring that he only killed other killers: “Be careful, Harry said. And he taught me to be careful as only a cop could teach a killer. To choose carefully among those who deserved it. To make absolutely sure. Then tidy up. Leave no traces. And always avoid emotional involvement; it can lead to mistakes.” 11 The Code is what makes Lindsay’s rhetoric of evil so compelling and acceptable. It positions Dexter as a force for good rather than a psychopathic murderer, thereby absolving the reader of any guilt they may (or should) feel at enjoying representations of violence and engaging with a serial killer. This process reduces what psychologists refer to as cognitive dissonance. As Jacovina et al. explain, ‘[c]ognitive dissonance occurs when people hold two conflicting ideas simultaneously,’ 12 in this case support for the actions of a fictional serial killer and an understanding that multiple murder can never be justified in real-life. Dissonance is uncomfortable but readers can reduce it by ‘conveniently glossing over the fact that Dexter kills to sate his thirst for murder’ 13 rather than a desire to do right, and focusing instead on the Code. Reducing dissonance in this way makes Dexter more sympathetic and underscores the righteousness of his rhetoric of evil, thereby validating the reader’s and viewer’s decision to follow it. Although dissonance is unpleasant, Jacovina et al. tell us that it ‘is accompanied by a strong state of arousal [...] [which] within the context of a narrative [...] may actually be pleasurable.’ 14 Furthermore, ‘[w]hen people read for entertainment, higher levels of arousal are related to higher levels of enjoyment.’ 15 Despite the discomfort, then, it appears that readers enjoy the experience of dissonance and perhaps even actively pursue it by engaging with this kind of

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__________________________________________________________________ material. The suggestion of pleasure/pain brings to mind Lacan’s concept of jouissance. In general usage jouissance refers to pleasure, but for Lacan it is a way of referring to anything which is too much for the subject to bear, be that an excess of stimulation or a complete absence of it. It can indicate a move beyond boundaries or a connection outside of the self, and also implies an impulse to abolish the condition of lack. 16 In the context of Lindsay’s novels, the reader’s jouissance is prompted by the conflict between our acceptance of Dexter (and his murders) and our conviction that his actions could never be condoned in real-life; we are moved to overcome our distaste at Dexter’s moral bankruptcy and predatory nature, and side with him, temporarily denying our usual beliefs. As Dexter’s colleagues in pursuit of the Bay Harbour Butcher come close to catching him, we find ourselves in a fraught state - tacit acknowledgement of our own guilt and their function as an externalised superego. Our jouissance is consolidated by our decision to break the societal taboo surrounding murder so that we may identify with and accept Dexter. In his ‘Seminar 17,’ Lacan also refers to jouissance as ‘the path toward death [...] a discourse about masochism’ 17 - fitting when considered alongside our tortured relationship with modernity’s favourite fictional serial killer. The dissonance created by our acceptance of Dexter results in what Freud terms ‘moral masochism’ as our reasoning, law-abiding ego comes under attack from our aggressive and sadistic superego. Significantly, this turning back of sadism against the self regularly occurs where a cultural suppression of the instincts [italics in the original] holds back a large part of the subject’s destructive instinctual components from being exercised in life. 18 In denying our own sadistic urges and vicariously enjoying Dexter’s instead, we are subconsciously turning these urges against ourselves. Such masochistic behaviour ratchets instinctual tension up to titillating levels so we may embrace the pleasure/pain of the resultant jouissance. For the reader or viewer of transgressive texts such as Dexter, the masochism lies in the dissonance created by our identification with Dexter’s Dark Passenger, Lindsay’s term for the primal and irresistible drive that compels the protagonist to commit his murderous acts. Although hopefully few of Lindsay’s readers wish to slaughter other human beings, the struggle between the light and dark sides of the self is common to all. Our vicarious enjoyment of the dark doings of Dexter’s unleashed id represents a seemingly risk-free way of exercising our own Dark Passenger, with the mediating frames of the novel and TV screen allowing us to distance ourselves from the conscious and subconscious drives being explored. Yet, the process is not without its hazards. Moral masochism destroys moral consciousness, eroding our sense of

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__________________________________________________________________ right and wrong and making it easier for us to accept characters like Dexter. And, as Freud points out, [i]ts danger lies in the fact that it originates from the death instinct and corresponds to the part of that instinct which has escaped being turned outwards as an instinct of destruction. 19 The jouissance we feel as the process plays out arises from the experience of enduring punishment and pain simultaneously with pleasure. This moral masochism alleviates the guilt we feel at enjoying representations of violence, helping us to disavow our own dark selves and deny our complicity in Dexter’s actions. Taking pleasure from transgression in this way also offers reassurance to the beleaguered modern reader or viewer. Like Dexter, we too can feel adrift and alienated in a bewildering, fast-paced and aggressive modernity that at times seems to be spinning out of control. Our consumption of texts such as Dexter suggests transgression as a means of re-inscribing the dominant social order. The masochistic pleasure we take from engaging with Dexter fetishises our submissive role in society, thereby reinforcing the moral interdictions that suppress our destructive instincts. The power of Lindsay’s creation lies in his ability to simultaneously challenge and support the dominant fictions of society. The reader or viewer is radically split when dealing with Dexter. It is impossible to inhabit a single subject position—we are Dexter, the righteous avenger ridding society of the killers and paedophiles who threaten us and our children; we are also Dexter’s victims’ victims: the weak, powerless and downtrodden who are preyed on in a chaotic, nihilistic modernity. Dexter, then, is more than a dramatic monster or an expression of zeitgeist. He is the embodiment of our darkest desires and of our deep need to shore up the flagging social structures of the twenty-first century.

Notes 1

Julia Kristeva, The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Colombia University Press, 1982), 4. 2 Stephanie Green, ‘Dexter Morgan’s Monstrous Origins’, Critical Studies in Television: Scholarly Studies in Small Screen Fictions 6, No. 1 (Spring 2011): 29. 3 Robert D. Stolorow, ‘The Meaning and Rhetoric of Evil: Auschwitz and Bin Laden’, The Huffington Post, June 27, 2011, accessed May 15, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-d-stolorow/the-meaning-and-therheto_b_884927.html. 4 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 2006).

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Edward S. Herman, Triumph of the Market: Essays on Economics, Politics, and the Media (Boston: South End Press, 1995), 97. 6 Ibid. 7 Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter (London: Orion, 2004), 85. 8 Herman, Triumph of the Market, 97. 9 Christiana Gregoriou, Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 103. 10 Christopher Ryan, ‘Being Dexter Morgan’, in The Psychology of Dexter, ed. Bella DePaulo (Dallas: Smart Pop, 2010), 255. 11 Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, 41. 12 Matthew E. Jacovina et al., ‘Faster, Dexter! Kill! Kill!’, in The Psychology of Dexter, ed. Bella DePaulo (Dallas: Smart Pop, 2010), 236. 13 Ibid., 239. 14 Ibid., 240. 15 Ibid., 241. 16 Jacques Lacan, Écrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 324. 17 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis 1969-1970, trans. Russell Grieg (New York: Norton, 2007), 18. 18 Sigmund Freud, ‘The Economic Problem of Masochism’, in Complete Works of Freud Volume XIX (London: Vintage, 2001), 170. 19 Ibid.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin, 2006. DePaulo, Bella, ed. The Psychology of Dexter. Dallas: Smart Pop, 2010. Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Volume XIX (1923-1925). London: Vintage, 2001. Green, Stephanie. ‘Dexter Morgan’s Monstrous Origins’. Critical Studies in Television: Scholarly Studies in Small Screen Fictions 6, No. 1 (Spring 2011): 22– 35. Gregoriou, Christiana. Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

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__________________________________________________________________ Herman, Edward S. Triumph of the Market: Essays on Economics, Politics, and the Media. Boston: South End Press, 1995. Jacovina, Matthew E., Matthew A. Bezdek, Jeffrey E. Foy, William G. Wenzel, and Richard J. Gerrig. ‘Faster, Dexter! Kill! Kill!’. In The Psychology of Dexter, edited by Bella DePaulo, 229–242. Dallas: Smart Pop, 2010. Kristeva, Julia. The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Colombia University Press, 1982. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis 1969-1970. Translated by Russell Grieg. New York: Norton, 2007. Lindsay, Jeff. Darkly Dreaming Dexter. London: Orion, 2004. Ryan, Christopher. ‘Being Dexter Morgan’. In The Psychology of Dexter, edited by Bella DePaulo, 246–256. Dallas: Smart Pop, 2010. Stolorow, Robert D. ‘The Meaning and Rhetoric of Evil: Auschwitz and Bin Laden’. The Huffington Post, June 27, 2011. Accessed May 15, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-d-stolorow/the-meaning-and-therheto_b_884927.html. Abby Bentham is a PhD candidate at the University of Salford, currently researching a thesis on narrative techniques for representing aberrant psychology in fiction. Her wider research interests include transgression, psychoanalysis, masculinity, film theory and narratology.

Will the Real Monster Please Stand Up?: Who Is the Monster in the Land of Monsters? Simon Bacon Abstract Texts such as Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954) show a dystopic future where humans are in decline, and a race of mutants, or what were once considered monsters, are now in the majority. Cinematic adaptations of the novel repeat one side of this motif where the human being is portrayed as being monstrous not because of the in-human acts that s/he commits, but because of his/her difference to the monsters around him/her. Daybreakers by the Spierig Brothers (2009) follows this motif but the vampires remain as structured as they were in their human lives; humans are just a source of food and not the abject other. Consequently, the vampires have to monster-ise other monsters to create a stable society, and to do so they abject those that do not follow the new forms of social prohibition. Resultantly, the more they disobey societal rules the more monstrous they become, changing from their normal nearly-human form into large bestial batlike creatures. In contrast, Predators by Nimrod Antal (2010) differentiates within the category of what is considered human. Its human protagonists, considered monsters on Earth, are transported to an alien world and the contrast to the indigenous inhabitants causes them to be humanised in this world of monsters.Yet, the end of the film reveals a monster seemingly worse than all those they have encountered so far - the human monster. This is very similar to the monstrosity shown in Daybreakers, where the monsters by feeding upon themselves or other vampires ‘kill’ their own kind. In conclusion, both films show that to kill one’s own kind is inevitably monstrous and further, that the real monster of the future, even in a world full of monsters, is not the one that is excluded by society but the one that excludes itself. It is most likely to be human. Key Words: Monster, human, abjection, vampires, zombies, The Hunger Games, Daybreakers, Predators, aliens. ***** 1. I, Monster I would like to start this chapter with a line from Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins, and recently in a cinema near you. Towards the end of the final book in the trilogy, Mockingjay, she says: ‘I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despite being one myself.’ 1 Her despair comes from the recognition of her own inherent monstrosity in a world of monsters. These monsters are not imagined demons from another world, or her own subconscious, but the everyday humans in the world around her,

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__________________________________________________________________ or at least those humans that run it. In this framework her monstrosity is configured in not being different to them but in being like them. One could almost say that she is no better than the monsters around her, however that is a judgement to be reserved for later in this chapter. This idea of the real monsters being human, and The Hunger Games definitely makes that point even with all the descriptions of the various ‘mutations’ in the books, is not a new one, but it is one that is re-appearing in some recent blockbuster films. This possibly signifies a shift in popular perception of what or who constitutes the ‘real’ monsters in contemporary Western society. Early cinematic monsters, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy or the Wolfman were always outsiders and in the singular. Even if they threatened to multiply and spread their monstrosity - through a bite or infection (like the vampire or werewolf) - they were easily recognisable as being a monster. Their difference and outsider status consequently defined what was considered human within the context in which they arose. After World War II, this situation can be seen to have shifted when the potential of plagues of monsters taking over the Earth became conceivable. This was sometimes the result of alien invasion, as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegal, 1956). But possibly of more interest here is Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend and its various cinematic offshoots. 2 2. I Am Legend The apocalypse in I Am Legend has an unknown cause, though it is possibly nuclear testing. It has created a mutation that is making all infected humans to turn into vampires (actually vampire zombies ... or zampires 3 ). Seemingly, the only person left unaffected is Robert Neville, probably because he has some immunity after being bitten by a vampire bat some years before. As such, he becomes the Last Man on Earth or rather the last human. Interestingly, throughout the novel, he feels it is his duty as a human being to kill and dispose of as many monsters as he can (a curious twist on this is seen in 1971’s The Omega Man where the monsters are constructed as religious fanatics). Whilst Neville has been pre-occupied killing zampires, a new species of human has also managed to survive the infection. Using drugs to control their condition they are part human/part zampire. But because Neville fails to distinguish them from the zampires, he has been killing them as well. Consequently, they designate him as a monster, and at the end of the novel Neville has a similar realisation as Katniss Everdeen - he sees that in the eyes of the new majority, he is as monstrous as the zampires: ‘He knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed.’ 4 As such, it is his very humanity that makes him a monster. This same story has been retold in various guises, not least the many zombie apocalypse narratives, but Daybreakers by the Speirig Brothers from 2009 slightly shifts this narrative into how the monster is defined.

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__________________________________________________________________ 3. Daybreakers Daybreakers shows a version of the near future where a mysterious disease has turned everyone into vampires. This is no shambolic zombie horde but a well-run society, virtually indistinguishable from any modern city, except its working day takes place largely at night. The only fly in the ointment is that their sole source of food – humans - are in short supply (no True Blood-style synthetic blood or Twilight veggie vamps here). As such, humans are not seen as monstrous but as an increasingly rare delicacy. In a nod to The Matrix, any humans found are placed in highly efficient blood harvesting farms, or battery humans if you will. Consequently, the vampires, though in the majority, are still monsters. So to displace this signification they have to create their own monsters and ‘humanise’ themselves. This is seen in the figures of the Subsiders. These are vampires that, largely due to the scarcity of human blood, either feed off themselves or other vampires. These self-harming or cannibalistic vampires become increasingly aggressive and bat-like in appearance. Their ears become pointed (part Nosferatu and part Vulcan), they lose body hair and grow claws and folds of excess skin and eventually even wings. Their signification as the ‘real’ monsters in the film is interesting on many levels, but not least in the ambivalence it produces around the term ‘monster’ itself. Traditionally, a large part of the vampires’ monstrosity is configured around the fact that they were once humans that now feed off other humans, thus transgressing the taboo of cannibalism. In Daybreakers, to normalise the vampire the Subsiders have to be configured as worse monsters. The Subsiders, then, exemplify the result of such same species consumption but excessively or doubly so as they are vampires (that were once humans) that eat other vampires (who also were once humans). Here then, if you eat your own species (with the vague distinction between vampires not actually being human) not only are you acting monstrously but you will also look like a monster. Oddly though, when the vampires feed off humans, they do not look more monstrous, but in fact they look more human. The inference of this is interesting and somewhat contradictory. Firstly, it suggests that vampires and humans are different species (as monsters cannot be human) but also sees that perhaps the worst kind of monsters are the ones that look human but are not. The real monsters are in fact the vampires that look and act like humans; whereas the Subsiders at least look like what they are. Anxieties since 9/11 are very much centred on the fear that you can never know who your true enemy is, or what they might look like ... in fact it could be a family member or your best friend. This is not dissimilar to the Cold War anxieties during which Matheson wrote his novel and films like Body Snatchers came out. It is no coincidence, then, that this same unease can now be seen in many vampire and zombie horrors. This is clearly discernible in the lines, or variants of, present in almost all zombie films when one of the characters say: ‘She is no longer your mum!’ What was once most familiar and safe is now other and monstrous. A more

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__________________________________________________________________ recent film - Predators from 2010 by Nimrod Antal - plays with this idea but also subverts it. 4. Predators The most recent instalment of the Predator franchise tells of a warrior class of aliens that views the universe as one big game safari park and who constantly travel in search of new adversaries against whom they could test their hunting prowess. 5 This time, however, rather than coming to Earth, they transport a group of selected humans to a ‘game reserve’ near their home planet. What is interesting about this film is that everyone involved in the plot can be considered a monster of some kind. The humans that have been dropped onto the game reserve are all either mercenaries or criminals. All have killed, tortured and/or raped other humans for either money or pleasure. None of them are ‘innocents’ and all have been specifically chosen by the Predators because of their inherent or perceived monstrosity. As such, they serve, not unlike Neville before them, to humanise the aliens. At least the aliens openly say what they are, and they look like monsters (not unlike the Subsiders) and they have a code that they live by. A Predator is exactly what it says on the tin! The humans on the other hand are constantly lying about who and what they are, and almost inevitably the least dangerous looking person turns out to be the most monstrous. This comes at the end of the film where Edwin, who up until this point has been the most helpless and seemingly misplaced human on the planet, reveals his true monstrosity. After having fallen into a large hole with the only female in the group (who is actually a ‘good guy’), he paralyses her with a nerve toxin he took from a plant early in the story and says: I guess now you realize why they chose me. I was right in front of you guys the whole time. Just watching you. Earning your trust. You couldn’t see me for what I really am. You see, back home, I’m a murderer. I’m a freak. But here, among the monsters, I’m normal. 6 This is a particularly interesting construction in light of recent hit series like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. Firstly, within this, the monsters themselves are virtually indistinguishable from the humans around them, and often suddenly turn into monsters, or turn humans around them into monsters. In both series humans and supernatural creatures - such as vampires, shape-shifters and fairies can only be seen as such when they reveal themselves, or when they affect the humans whom they live amongst. Secondly, the monstrousness of the humans within these narratives becomes displaced. Where one assumes that human monstrosity would become normalised, if not at home in the world of hybrid monsters that they suddenly find themselves in, the humans in fact become more

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__________________________________________________________________ monstrous. Similarly, the werewolf hunters in the recent Teen Wolf series or the religious fundamentalists in True Blood, in being as bad as the monsters whilst still being human, in fact become worse than monsters. These two series in particular reveal a similarity to The Hunger Games but a difference to Predators: unlike Edwin, the human monsters here do not know they are monsters; they see themselves as perfectly justified in acting the way they do. Likewise in The Vampire Diaries, we see characters acting under compulsion (where they are given new memories or lose old ones) or unable to stop acting in a certain way. They are often fully aware of the monstrosity they are enacting and are unable to stop themselves; or they only realise after the event what they have done or become. 5. The Real Monster? In conclusion I think a couple of interesting points come out here. First is that even monsters need their own monsters, and that when monsters are configured as more humane than humans then it is time to rethink what we exactly mean by the term ‘human.’ Furthermore, the discussed examples speak about the innate nature of a thing. A monstrous nature should produce a monstrous form, and subsequently, when ‘good’ monsters do something bad, we are neither shocked or surprised. But humans are expected to act humanely or, at least according to Predators, to act in accordance to their natures. Therefore, the rapists and mercenaries who look and act like rapists and mercenaries are monsters - but human ones (since their actions and appearance conform to our expectations). Edwin, on the other hand, blatantly lies about his nature, both in actions and appearance, which makes him more monstrous than the monsters. This is an interesting idea to link back to Katniss in The Hunger Games. President Snow and the rebel Leader Coin know their own natures as human monsters, but Katniss thinks that she is something else; the cruel and bloody Games themselves do not make her a monster but just more like her true self. It is her inability to accept that which configures her as something other than human. This possibly ties back into the proliferation of humane monsters in contemporary culture. If monsters are, according to theorists such as Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, the return or projection of the repressed out into the world, then sparkly vampires are possibly telling us that it is time to accept our true natures, and that humans have the potential to be far more monstrous that anything we can imagine. 7

Notes 1

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (London: Scholastic Ltd., 2010), 440.

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__________________________________________________________________ 2

Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow, dirs., The Last Man on Earth, 1964; Boris Sagal, dir., The Omega Man, 1971; Francis Lawrence, dir., I Am Legend, 2007. 3 Victoria Nelson, Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012), 154. 4 Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (London: Gollancz, 2007 [1954]), 161. 5 This series began in 1987 in the film Predator, directed by John Mctiernen and staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. 6 Antal Nimrod, dir., Predator, 2010. 7 Sigmund Freud, On Dreams, trans. James Strachey (New York: W.W.Norton & Company Inc., 1952) and Ernest Jones, On the Nightmare (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1951). .

Bibliography Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. London: Scholastic Ltd., 2010. Freud, Sigmund. On Dreams. Translated by James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1952. Jones, Ernest. On the Nightmare. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1951. Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. London: Gollancz, 2007 [1954]. Nelson, Victoria. Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Filmography Antal, Nimrod, dir. Predators. 20th Century Fox, 2010. Ball, Alan, creator. True Blood. HBO, 2008-present. Davis, Jeff, creator. Teen Wolf. MGM Television, 2011-present. Lawrence, Frances, dir. I Am Legend. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2007. Plec, Julie, and Kevin Williamson, creators. The Vampire Diaries. Warner Bros. Television, 2009-present.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ragona, Ubaldo, and Sidney Salkow, dirs. The Last Man on Earth. 20th Century Fox, 1964. Sagal, Boris, dir. The Omega Man. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1971. Siegal, Don, dir. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Allied Artists Picture Corporation, 1956. Spierig, Michael, and Peter Spierig, dirs. Daybreakers. Lionsgate, 2009. Wachowski, Andy, and Larry Wachowski, dirs. The Matrix. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1999. Simon Bacon is an Independent Researcher based in Poznań, Poland. His main area of study is the cinematic vampire and he is currently working on a publication Undead Memory: Vampires and Human Memory in Popular Culture.

Part 2 Redrawing the Map: Spaces and Dimensions of Monstrosity

Grendel: Boundaries of Flesh and Law Almudena Nido Abstract In Beowulf, Grendel presents himself as a figure of inescapable ambiguity and as an embodiment of the paradox that causes consternation in the human community. There is no unambiguous definition for the monster in this masterpiece of Old English literature, and Grendel is presented as an exile in space and discourse - his malicious shadow compared with other types of monsters in Scandinavian literature or as an allegory of Evil in a Christian perspective. These theoretical approaches do not take into account the fact that the monster is something inherent, not only to epic but to society itself. Following Michel Foucault’s theories of power and resistance, this chapter will offer a more comprehensive vision of what Grendel represents. I intend to show that the monster has to be taken into account not only as the personification of pure evil or as the necessary antagonist for the hero, but also because legal and social power in Heorot exists. Grendel and his Mother inhabit the darkest space within society: that of resistance, of being the Other against whom members inside society can define themselves and assert their position as part of the community. With each stride and attack, Grendel enforces and articulates the community’s identity. Even though the monster roams outside the field of human space, it simultaneously resides inside human consciousness. The monster forms the threshold and the limit needed by society in Beowulf both in terms of what is constructed as natural and considered as legal. Grendel is the night that Heorot needs in order to shine. A night that has to be denied but, without which, society cannot exist. Key Words: Beowulf, Grendel, Foucault, power, resistance, Old English, mutilation, beheading, monster, medieval. ***** The boundaries in Beowulf are as fragile as the human body in Grendel’s maws. The monster penetrates physical space with great ease, and the protection of mail means nothing to his claws. Unless they are strengthened or reshaped with the ambivalent power of the hero, the limits of Heorot and of human society cannot protect the order established within them when confronted with the monster. Following Michel Foucault’s theories about the monster and incorporating in the analysis the legal aspects of Grendel, this chapter reflects upon the representation of a monster in Beowulf and the boundaries that the monstrous protagonist tears and digests. His specific relation to order as a figure of ambivalence and ambiguity erodes all limits that prove too vulnerable and unstable. Not even the violent intervention by the hero will secure the community’s

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__________________________________________________________________ identity as the monster seems to be an inherent element of it, needed since its foundation. Violence is used both to consolidate the ever expanding human community in the reign of monsters and to establish boundaries that are not to be trespassed imposing authority on discourse and on space, ‘[t]hereafter they would never hinder the passage of sea-voyagers over the deep water.’ 1 By shifting the focus to the legal limits that Grendel embodies, this analysis will help a modern audience to relate this medieval monster to its more human descendants. Due to the ambivalent establishment of boundaries as permanent limits and possible transgressions, flesh proves a very vulnerable boundary in Beowulf when considered as such a limit. It cannot preserve the identity of an individual from a greedy and blood-thirsty monster. 2 If the physical boundaries of flesh and wood in Beowulf are not safe from Grendel’s voracious attacks, the more subtle limits imposed by discourse and social conventions are in danger of total collapse. This is because the maintenance and validity of those boundaries are dependent on the same essential token of expression of the monster, the sign of crisis inside Heorot blood. The walls of the Hall embody the social restrictions that hold the society together and form the place where, even though it has been founded by violence, the sight of blood is banned because it is the centre of the community. 3 When Grendel enters into the hall he brings with him ‘a monstrous ambiguity’ 4 that manifests itself with the monster in the space which should be the safest for its inhabitants. 5 In reality, both space and flesh constitute ineffective boundaries in the narrative when not even discourse can give Grendel a fixed definition as either human or monster. His association with Cain and the ensuing Christian tradition of evil prevents the creation of a safe distance from the monster that appears too human. 6 Notwithstanding the possible allegorical functions of the monsters in medieval art, 7 Grendel was an entity too real for the Anglo-Saxon audience, a terror against which they had to devise mechanism of protection. 8 Grendel in the poem is a monster ‘who live[s] near civilized men and [is] actively hostile and harmful.’ 9 Suddenly, the locus monstruoso manifests itself not far from home. Indeed, Grendel stands expectantly on the ‘edge’ of Heorot itself, penetrating the gates of the Hall. Spatially, there is no longer a safe distance to mediate between predator and prey in Beowulf, even though the monster is identified as an exile. 10 It is precisely the fact that Grendel commits his crimes inside the Hall that makes him more terrible, and his crimes more heinous. 11 No longer a safe adornment of the borders of maps and manuscripts, ‘at a too great a remove to be personally verified,’ 12 the monster is too near for comfort. The only distance separating Grendel from the centre of the community is an uneasy and fragile surface that is inclusive to the social space, and this reveals that the locus monstruoso 13 is ‘not outside so much as it is the threshold and conductor between outside and inside.’ 14 The only criterion for Grendel’s monstrosity in Beowulf seems to be his isolation and exteriority to the community - ‘to be a monster means to be alienated,

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__________________________________________________________________ to be alienated means to move into the world of monsters.’ 15 However, the monster is never an absolute outsider, nor as far away from the centre as the clear delimitations would have us believe. The very foundations of Heorot, the lines that mark the social space on the natural surface of land, seem to imply a possibility of transgression. As limits that define an outside and an inside as well as a position for the monster as an outsider, the walls of the Hall are inscriptions of power and discourse on land and, as such, are vulnerable to the attacks of the monster. Like self-inflicted wounds, doors and gates grant access to the most vulnerable interior of the social space. By creating the threshold, a nowhere space of ambiguity and ambivalence between inside and outside, an unwanted third element is then constituted as a part of social space. Grendel, then, finds his natural position as the threshold, limiting what is inside from what is outside, partaking of both at the same time. In a distance as important as the one between what is acceptable and what is not, there only appears to be two possible positions. But every threshold, every possible gap in a boundary, is a possibility of transgression that can exist in that reduced space between inside and outside, where the ambiguity of the monster fits that narrow zone of a line where it displays the flash of its passage, but perhaps also its entire trajectory, even its origin; it is likely that transgression has its entire space in the line it crosses. 16 Grendel’s presence in the gates of Heorot, as a logical reply to the invitation of the boundaries of the Hall, explicitly recalls the transgression of all the possible boundaries, including that of the normative discourse of the creation narrative of the Genesis that separates and limits, ordering space. 17 No limit can detain the ambiguous presence from entering and marring the order just established by the human figure of authority in Beowulf by the edification of Heorot. 18 This points suggestively to the relationship of the monster to order and how the monster effectively disorders both space and discourse with his attack on Heorot, as well as the order of the body which is essential for any kind of life. 19 Grendel’s presence in Heorot is measured by the breach of law and space that the monster embodies. In a strange combination of perplexity and recognition, Grendel steps as close as possible to the social fabric of Heorot only when he disrupts its ‘normality’ - when he is eating it - penetrating the softest surface which is simultaneously alien and his own. In fact, the only proof of Grendel being able to get so close to the supposedly safe space of Heorot is written in blood in the walls of the hall with the most powerful language of violence. 20 Grendel’s hunger is the ruin of the community, as he participates in it not through an active social role but through literal consumption. 21 He is usurping the thane’s position, creating new social boundaries in his own physical body: ‘Flesh is

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__________________________________________________________________ united to flesh in an unbroken round of eating and being eaten.’ 22 Through anthropophagy Grendel achieves a new community where he cannot be an exile because he is the very centre from which it emerges. His antisocial behaviour enters the community not only in the form of an attack on the Hall, which is not unprecedented, but also in a much more disturbing way - through literally ingesting the figure-head of the society. By spilling and drinking the thanes’ blood, he sins against his dubious percentage of humanity showing how he tries to appropriate a position that does not belong to the monster. With each attack Grendel communicates in a frenzy of scorn and malice more than just his need to feed. His cannibal attack is never just about eating but is primarily a medium for nongustatory messages - messages having to do with the maintenance, regeneration, and in some cases, the foundation of the cultural order, 23 revealing that his attacks are part of his relation to authority in Heorot. Again positioned as an element in connection with (dis)order, Grendel’s hunger is very human - ‘the envy of the exile at the joyous singing and communal feeling of the men in the meadhall, an emotion similar to that of Satan.’ 24 And as a violent expression that is recognisably human rather than simply monstrous, it has a legal and social dimension because of the social and legal boundaries that he consumes. This proves that the monster in Beowulf is ambiguously human not only in his possible physical aspect or his relationship to Cain, but in his adherence to the law, tearing a very important boundary in the Germanic community. The human dimension of his crimes, apart from the suffering and bereavement in the community, appears in the mention of Grendel not paying wergild for his crimes. It was expected in the Germanic context that crimes, like the ones committed by the monster, would entitle the victim’s family to compensation paid by the monster himself. 25 He [Grendel] wanted no peace with any of the men of the Danish host, would not withdraw his deadly rancor, or pay compensation: no counselor there had any reason to expect splendid repayment at the hands of the slayer. 26 A question arises unexpectedly and with unease: Would the payment of that legal imposition have changed the impression the protagonist left behind? It seems that the lack of due wergild is the only requirement for the monster to exist as such. By rejecting the social convention of wergild, the monster also rejects the last vestiges of his ambiguous humanity. As a consequence of Grendel’s violation, there seems to be no legal or moral doubt that the monster must be punished: ‘The

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__________________________________________________________________ fight with Grendel, as Beowulf himself recounts, was one he could take on with a clear moral mandate.’ 27 No matter how Grendel’s ‘human’ plight can be likened to the Germanic reality of exile due to his loneliness and wretched isolation away from the merriment and warmth of the Hall, Grendel’s refusal to negotiate put him morally and socially speaking, beyond the pale. He did not play by the rules. The poet’s audience [...] lived in a feuding culture; they were familiar with the conventions. 28 Wergild was a legal precept that prevented warrior societies from collapsing. Whoever refused to pay for his crimes was an enemy of the community. Suddenly, the lawful aspects of the monster in society appear in Beowulf as a consequence of the monster’s bloody aftermath, and blur a societal boundary, one that is already ambivalent and easily transgressed. The antagonist has legal responsibility specific to the community and historic context that defines him as a monster. 29 As a transgression whose sole existence depends on his infringement of the lawful order, he constantly reproduces his position as a threshold element. Being a double transgressor of both natural and legal orders, the monster ‘appears and functions precisely at the point where nature and law are joined,’ 30 and disappears only when he no longer poses an infraction of the law. Since law cannot apply to him, the monster is defined as non-human ‘in a legal and literal case.’ 31 Paradoxically though, no matter how much of an outsider he is portrayed to be, how exterior he is to the society he attacks, he is an irregularity inside the legal order that ‘calls law into question and disables it.’ 32 As ‘a legal labyrinth, a violation of and an obstacle to the law, both a transgression and undecidability at the level of the law,’ 33 Grendel is included in the formulation of wergild as an exclusion. As a legal system intended to counteract the consequences of any violent deeds inside the community, 34 wergild is a mechanism that substitutes the blood sacrifices for money and gives cohesion to the community by preserving it from infinite blood feuds, as well as ‘expresse[s] both the unity of the kindred in paying for the crimes of their members and the justice of the accuser’s case.’ 35 It institutes a legal limit for violence by establishing the repayment of the offense and allowing an end to long-term feuds. 36 What the payment of wergild could avert in the case of Grendel’s attacks - the victims’ kin having physical and legal revenge on Grendel - is impossible. He is too strong and too violent, 37 and does not fear the vendetta that could ensue from his actions. There is no way for any of the thanes in Heorot to be superior in violence to an enemy that will not respect the civilities of the community in peace and war: ‘Grendel exhibits disregard if not outright disdain for the symbols and ceremonies of human order, including even the civilities of warfare.’ 38 We must question, though, why Grendel should respect wergild when he stays in total resistance to the order established

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__________________________________________________________________ inside the community since he is excluded from it. Grendel does not need to obey the law of Heorot after all: ‘Why should a cat come to terms with mice?’ 39 The monster, bathed and sated with blood, does not threaten a fratricide war of never-ending feud inside the community (which wergild protects against 40 ) since he resides outside of the order imposed by the Hall. He uses and produces a violence that will engulf the whole community and render the social and legal mechanism, including wergild, useless. Grendel, with his total disregard of the system of legal compensation, achieves the same as he does with his blood deeds ‘[t]he dissolution of regulations pertaining to the individual’s proper place in society.’ 41 Every time he kills a thane with a particular wergild that goes unpaid, he eats his way not only into flesh but also into the hierarchical position inside the social fabric of Heorot. 42 With impunity the monster can attack the centre of the community in Beowulf, getting as close to Hrothgar’s throne as possible. Grendel’s supposed exteriority to the law and the community is not so important when he attacks it, as his assaults are interpreted and translated into an operation of human violence and retribution. He is integrated into the rules, albeit only in the transgression, just as he is integrated into the legal consequences inside the social space where these conventions and rituals are essential to preserve order and to maintain peace. 43 As it has been shown in this chapter, it is not only the physical - that is the most easily identifiable of boundaries - that the monster tears into in Beowulf. Implied by the presence of blood, the legal borders have been recalled and transgressed because they are expressed ultimately with violence. Once impure blood has stained the walls, Grendel has effectively dissolved all boundaries and distinctions within Heorot by disrupting order in all its aspects. With no payment for the monster’s crimes and no possibility of punishing the monster, Hrothgar is at loss as to how to recover authority after the attacks and how to restore the social space of the Hall once impure violence has been committed inside. As a consequence, rituals cannot work properly within the hall and Hrothgar’s authority is futile. As long as the monster can occupy the threshold position, power cannot be regenerated within Heorot. Due to Grendel’s cannibalism and ambivalent human nature he is too close to the community he eats because of his possible identification with Cain and the social figure of the exile. He is also too close because he inhabited the threshold proving an inherent element of Heorot from the building of the Hall, and thus the first moment of defining a separate, social space from natural space. But no matter his physical monstrosity, the most important monstrous acts of Grendel seem to be his total disregard of wergild and the legal consequences of his actions within the Hall. With the new adornments in the walls of Heorot the social space has collapsed no longer considered safe, its conventions no longer useful and the restrictions ignored by the monster. The violence the monster perpetrates inside the Hall

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__________________________________________________________________ results in a community that needs the boundaries that Grendel has put into question and destroyed with his violent incursions in the very centre of society.

Notes 1

Beowulf, 565-569. All the Beowulf quotes used in this chapter belong to Talbot Donaldson’s translation Beowulf (New York: W.W Norton Publishers, 1966). 2 Jeffrey J. Cohen, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 14; Judy Anne White, Hero-Ego in Search of Self: A Jungian Reading of ‘Beowulf’ (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 29. 3 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (London: Continuum Books, 1977), 31 and 35. 4 Magrit Shildrick, Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self (London: Sage Publications, 2002), 10-11. 5 Beowulf, 120-125. 6 Frederich Klaeber, ‘The Christian Elements in Beowulf’, Old English Newsletter Subsidia 24 (1996): 111-135; Dorothy Whitelock, The Audience of ‘Beowulf’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 5-12; David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature (Exeter: University Exeter Press, 1996), 11. 7 Susan Kim, ‘Man-Eating Monsters and Ants as Big as Dogs’, Medievalia Groningana XX, Animals and the Symbolic in Medieval Art and Literature (Gronigen: Egbert Forsten, 1997), 43. 8 Asa Mittman, ‘Headless Men and Hungry Monsters’, The Sarum Seminar Stanford University Alumni Center (March 2003), 3. 9 John B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 107. 10 Beowulf, 106-110 and 1351-1352; R. E. Kaske, ‘Sapientia et Fortitudo as the Controlling Theme of Beowulf’, in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), 287-288; Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 63. 11 Mittman, ‘Headless Men and Hungry Monsters’, 10. 12 Asa Mittman, Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (New York: Routledge, 2006), 11. 13 Ibid., 13. 14 Williams, Deformed Discourse, 17. 15 Andreas Haarder, ‘Beowulf’: The Appeal of a Poem (Viborg: Akademisk Vorlag, 1975), 278.

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__________________________________________________________________ 16

Michel Foucault, ‘A Preface to Transgression’, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), 33. 17 Averil Cameron, ‘Redrawing the Map: Early Christian Territory after Foucault’, Journal of Roman Studies 76 (1986): 268. 18 Beowulf, 89-98. 19 Andrew N. Sharpe, Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law (New York: Routledge, 2010), 24; Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France 1974-1975 (London: Verso, 2003), 63. 20 Eric Wilson ‘The Blood Wrought Peace: A Girardian Reading of Beowulf’, English Language Notes 34 (1996): 24. 21 Reay Tannahill, Flesh and Blood (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), 6. 22 Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995), 24. 23 Peggy R. Sanday, Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3. 24 Friedman, Monstrous Races, 106. 25 Ward Parks, ‘How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 92, No. 1 (1993): 6-8. 26 Beowulf, 153-158. 27 Albrecht Classen and Nadia Margolis, ed., War and Peace: Critical Issues in European Societies and Literature 800-1800 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., 2011), 147. 28 Richard A. Fletcher, Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 10. 29 Foucault, Abnormal, 55. 30 Ibid., 65. 31 Sharpe, Foucault’s Monsters, 23. 32 Foucault, Abnormal, 64. 33 Ibid., 63. 34 D. J. Fisher, Anglo-Saxon Age (Harlow: Longman, 1992), 121-122. 35 Mary Murray, The Law of the Father? Patriarchy in the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London: Routledge, 1995), 99. 36 Stephen S. Evans, Lords of Battle: Image and Reality of the ‘Comitatus’ in Dark-Age Britain (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1997), 68; Guy Halsall, Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West (Rochester: Boydell Press, 1998), 25. 37 Beowulf, 129-137 and 144-150. 38 Parks, ‘How Heroes Perceive Monsters’, 6. 39 Ibid., 7.

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__________________________________________________________________ 40

Dorothy Whitelock, The Beginnings of English Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963), 260-261. 41 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 59; Wilson, ‘Girardian Reading’, 26. 42 Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1989), 303. 43 Beowulf, 1052-1054 and 1333-1344; Whitelock, Beginnings of English Society, 41 and 143.

Bibliography Baker, Peter, ed. Beowulf: Basic Readings. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995. Cameron, Averil. ‘Redrawing the Map: Early Christian Territory after Foucault’. Journal of Roman Studies 76 (1986): 266–271. Classen, Albrecht, and Nadia Margolis, eds. War and Peace: Critical Issues in European Societies and Literature 800-1800. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., 2011. Cohen, Jeffrey. ‘In a Time of Monsters’. In Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages, edited by Jeffrey Cohen, vii–xiii. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Donaldson, Talbot. Beowulf. New York: W.W Norton Publishers, 1966. Donoghue, Daniel, ed. Beowulf: A Verse Translation. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Estes, Heide. ‘Raising Cain in Genesis and Beowulf: Challenges to Generic Boundaries in Anglo-Saxon Biblical Literature’. The Heroic Age 2010. Accessed May 10, 2012. http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/13/estes.php. Evans, Stephen S. Lords of Battle: Image and Reality of the ‘Comitatus’ in DarkAge Britain. Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1997. Fisher, D. J. Anglo-Saxon Age. Harlow: Longman, 1992. Fletcher, Richard A. Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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__________________________________________________________________ Foucault, Michael. ‘A Preface to Transgression’. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, edited by Donald F. Bouchard, 29–52. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980. —––. Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France 1974-1975. London: Verso, 2003. Friedman, John B. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. London: Continuum Books, 1977. Haarder, Andreas. Beowulf: The Appeal of a Poem. Viborg: Akademisk Vorlag, 1975. Halsall, Guy. Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West. Rochester: Boydell Press, 1998. Heaney, Seamus. ‘Beowulf: A Verse Translation’. In Beowulf: A Verse Translation, edited by Daniel Donoghue, 3–78. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Huffines, Marion L. ‘Old English Aglaeca: Magic and Moral Decline of Monsters and Men’. Semasia 1 (1974): 71–81. Kaske, R. E. ‘Sapientia et Fortitudo as the Controlling Theme of Beowulf’. In An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, edited by Lewis E. Nicholson, 269–310. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980. Kim, Susan. ‘Man-Eating Monsters and Ants as Big as Dogs’. Medievalia Groningana XX, Animals and the Symbolic in Medieval Art and Literature. Gronigen: Egbert Forsten, 1997. Klaeber, Frederich. ‘The Christian Elements in Beowulf’. Old English Newsletter Subsidia 24 (1996): 111–135. Kuhn, Sherman. ‘Old English Aglaeca: Middle Irish Ochlach’. In Linguistic Method: Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl, edited by Irrnengard Rauch, and Gerald F. Carr, 213–230. The Hague: Mouton Press, 1979. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Selections. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.

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__________________________________________________________________ Lefebvre, Henry. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000. Leyerle, John. ‘The Interlace Structure in Beowulf’. In Beowulf: A Verse Translation, edited by Daniel Donoghue, 130–152. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Mittman, Asa. ‘Headless Men and Hungry Monsters’. The Sarum Seminar Stanford University Alumni Center, March 2003. —––. Maps and Monsters in Medieval England. New York: Routledge, 2006. Murray, Mary. The Law of the Father? Patriarchy in the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. London: Routledge, 1995. Orchard, Andy. Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the BeowulfManuscript. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Parks, Ward. ‘How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf’. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 92, No. 1 (1993): 1–16. Poole, Fitz John. ‘Cannibals, Tricksters and Witches: Anthropophagic Images among Bimin-Kuskusmin’. In The Ethnography of Cannibalism, edited by Paula Brown, and Donald Tuzin, 6–32. Washington, DC: Society for Psychological Anthropology, 1983. Sanday, Peggy R. Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Sawday, Jonathan. The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995. Schwartz, Regina. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997. Sharpe, Andrew N. Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law. New York: Routledge, 2010. Shildrick, Margrit. Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self. London: Sage Publications, 2002.

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__________________________________________________________________ Stenton, Frank. Anglo-Saxon England. Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1989. Tannahill, Reay. Flesh and Blood. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975. White, Judy Anne. Hero-Ego in Search of Self: A Jungian Reading of ‘Beowulf’. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Whitelock, Dorothy. The Audience of ‘Beowulf’. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958. —––. The Beginnings of English Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963. Williams, David. Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature. Exeter: University Exeter Press, 1996. Wilson, Eric. ‘The Blood Wrought Peace: A Girardian Reading of Beowulf’. English Language Notes 34 (1996): 7–30. Almudena Nido is an independent researcher at the University of Oviedo (Spain) whose academic interests focus on the interactions of power and resistance in Beowulf. Currently, her research and writing are devoted to analysing the monsters in Beowulf as figures of resistance in space and discourse.

Haunted Communities: The Greek Vampire or the Uncanny at the Core of Nation Construction Álvaro García Marín Abstract The reason why Greece - once known as The Home of Nymphs and Vampires - has been cleansed from any monstrous connotations and promoted as a paradise of beauty and sunbathing remains unexplained. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, most references to Greece in Western texts include some allusion to the exotic and despicable superstition of the vrykolakas, the autochthonous vampire, known to Europeans even before the 1730 which saw an influx in depictions of the vrykolakas’s Slavic cousin - the vampir - in Western literature. Just before the heyday of the Enlightenment Philhellenism, allusions to the vrykolakas contributed to construing Greece’s Orientalistic or Balkanistic difference from the West in terms of theology, history and development. Philhellenism itself was haunted from its very birth by this uncanny mark of Otherness and monstrosity at the core of the aesthetic, rational and ahistorical utopia that was to be embodied by modern Greeks. Modern Greece itself, in the process of its national construction, had to face this undead and embarrassing part of its own past and present. Unwilling to remain tied to images of Orientalism or Balkanistic phantasies in the West’s mind, the Greek state tried to cleanse or integrate these revenants to the point that such an influential tradition has nowadays been almost completely effaced from collective memory. Following Renée Bergland’s concept of ‘haunted communities,’ my aim in this chapter is to explore a set of Greek vampire texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that have previously been neglected by vampire scholarship, in order to underscore the ways in which this figure undermines the national narrative by linking the monstrous to ethnic difference inside the community. I shall argue that an intense embodiment of the Freudian Unheimliche is taking place at the core of the Greek national construction as a fear of reverse self-colonisation. Key Words: Greece, vampires, revenants, vrykolakas, vampire fiction, the uncanny, nation construction, haunted communities, Philhellenism. ***** 1. Hauntings from the Outside: The (Vampiric) Invention of Greece 1 If we accept Derrida’s statement that ‘all national rootedness […] is rooted first of all in the memory or the anxiety of a displaced - or displaceable - population,’ 2 Benedict Anderson’s notion of ‘imagined communities’ could be easily replaced by Renée Bergland’s ‘haunted communities.’ 3 The uncanny in the Freudian sense would be thus inextricably linked to the process of nation construction: the familiar that returns as strange, or the strange that returns as familiar. In addition to this

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__________________________________________________________________ definition of the term, the uncanny can also be conceptualised, in the sphere of signs, as the instance of undecidability that prevents the closure of the signifier over the signified. This corresponds with the mechanism of national constitution insofar as, in the attempt to perfectly fit a cultural, ethnic, historical, religious or linguistic content into a predetermined signifier, there are continuous and uncontrollable overflows, excesses and, above all, spectralisations 4 on the unresolvable dialectic presence/absence. Greece is a state not older than two centuries, but its name evokes a civilisation older than two thousand years. It has constituted a perfect example of such psychic and semiotic uncanniness. Its configuration by the eighteenth century European Philhellenic discourse has been analysed in terms of ‘metaphorical’ or ‘mental colonization’ 5 or, more accurately, ‘self-colonization,’ 6 on the acceptance of certain ideologies. Namely, the classicist ideal of Western Philhellenism embraced by modern Greeks themselves gave birth to a nation compelled to fit an abstract model built by European Enlightenment in its own image rather than the daily practice of the Greek community - Greek-speaking and Christian Orthodox, but most of all a millet among others in the Ottoman Empire. The Orientalist or Balkanist element, however, haunts the discourse of European Philhellenism from its very beginning, introducing into the modern concept of Greece a disturbing element of unfamiliarity and difference from the West, which as a surplus causes a crisis in the construction of both Western and Greek identities. 7 Therefore, a certain uncanniness pervades the rediscovery of Greekness by Westerners who, in the period when vampires irrupt, come upon a story of revenance by means of which they aim to explain their own origin as a modern civilisation. The attempt to resuscitate Classical Antiquity, in contrast to the previous belief in continuity and constant re-actualisation of the Ancient that was believed to represent the essence of a time without gaps, brings at the same time modernity itself and the need of a new Greece as cultural model in it. Such an attempt allegorises its own uncanniness, inasmuch as familiarity and strangeness, presence and absence, the Occidental and the Oriental undermine each other by relentlessly (re)appearing at its core and thus preventing its historical or ontological meaning from closure. A haunting is already at work here. From the very first testimonies of Philhellenism, this haunting is epitomised by the revenant itself - the Greek type of the Balkan vampire, the vrykolakas, which operates inside the texts as a mark of Otherness that destabilises the proper sense of Greece as a discursive, historical and geographical factor, and thus problematises the self-definition of the West as a direct offspring of the diachronic Greek civilisation. 8 I argue that the vrykolakas is the first vampire widely known to the West in early modernity. Before the Serbian epidemics of vampirism in the 1730s spread its fame across Europe, the vrykolakas or its Cretan variant, the katakhanas, recurred in German, French, Italian or English treatises from the beginning of the fifteenth century. Along with some previous mentions in Antonio de Ferraris’ De

 

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__________________________________________________________________ situ Japygiae and Cornelius Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia, Martin Kraus’s Turcograecia, one of the founding texts of Philhellenism, contains already a disturbing description of the tradition of the vrykolakas in the framework of a defence of the emancipation of Greece from the Ottoman yoke on account of its being the cradle of the West. 9 Most allusions to the vrykolakas during the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, similarly to the later Serbian, Hungarian or Romanian cases, contributed to construing Greece’s Orientalistic or Balkanistic difference from the West - from a theological, ethnocentric or developmental point of view. The local vampire is usually a mark of religious schismaticism, as in the important works by Allatius, Richard, Ricaut, Heineccius or even Calmet, among others, but also of backwardness, superstition and Orientalism, as in the famous account by the French botanist Tournefort. 10 The uncanniness of the vampire is thus linked to the uncanniness of a resuscitated Greece which was to be the foundation of the historical, political and epistemological project of Enlightenment, but which at the same time came to undermine it. Hence the bewilderment of Voltaire, for example, in his Philosophical Dictionary. In the entry ‘vampire,’ he clearly distinguishes between Ancient and Modern Greece on the sole basis of the presence/absence of the concept of the vrykolakas: ‘Who would believe, that we derive the idea of vampires from Greece? Not from the Greece of Alexander, Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus and Demosthenes; but from Christian Greece, unfortunately schismatic.’ 11 Also Calmet and Van Swieten acknowledge the primacy of the Greek vrykolakas as the source of the whole series of undead corpses haunting Eastern Europe, and attribute this to the deviant barbaric irrationalism and religious heterodoxy that served to orientalise and de-historicise the Slavic territories South and East of the Danube through their perceived lack of cultural progress and essential statism. 12 Of course, it is much easier to fully orientalise Serbia, Hungary or Romania than the highly symbolic Greece. There is always a surplus pre-existing in Hellenic culture that defies its stable classification. Undeniably a part of the Oriental Ottoman Empire, it is also claimed to represent the cradle of Modern Europe and the very source of the concept of the enlightened West. The Greek Revolution against the Ottomans is instigated and legitimised by the Occidentals provided that it aims at the embodiment by Modern Greeks of the aesthetic, rationalistic and ahistorical utopia of the Enlightenment, and thus the resurrection of their prestigious ancestors. It is, in fact, a vampiric process, simultaneously epitomised and disjointed by the figure of the vrykolakas itself. The Enlightenment discovers in the Greek vampire the uncanniness associated, and arguably inherent, to its very project. Modern Greece fits Freud’s definition of the uncanny insofar as it is the familiar (the cradle of the West) that comes back as the strange (the deviation of Christian Orthodox Church, the Oriental behaviour and customs), and the strange that seems disquietingly familiar (the Ottoman people who speak a language of

 

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__________________________________________________________________ Western culture and hold the ruins of its ancient monuments). Like the vampire, it is neither fully dead nor entirely alive, but rather undead. Simultaneously modern and ancient, real and metaphoric, Oriental and Occidental, philosophical and superstitious, in trying to embody the accuracy of the Enlightenment it instead only succeeds in subverting it and embodying just the opposite - the undecidability that haunts and destabilises the universalism of the encyclopaedic epistemology. Though absent from the first fictionalisations of the vampire, which were mostly inspired by the Serbian cases of the 1730s, the Greek vrykolakas reappeared in Western culture just on the eve of the Greek War of Independence. Byron’s Giaour (1813), Hildebrand’s Der Vampyr oder die Todtenbraut: Ein Roman nach Neugriechischer Volkssagen and many other references show how the Greek undead was still considered to be the mother of all vampires. The most important and prolific work in this period, however, is Polidori’s The Vampyre. 13 In this text the dualistic nature of the monster is reborn in Greece to haunt the English society to which he once belonged. It allegorises the fear, not only of miscegenation but also of the uncanniness and undecidability inherent to the newly adopted epistemology and to modernity itself insofar as it implies a historical gap that denaturalises death and continuity. In short, it expresses the fear of contamination by an uncanny Greekness belonging at the same time to self and to other, that is to the core of European culture and to the Oriental Other of the Ottoman empire or the Orthodox tradition. The numerous offspring of this novel and of the half-Greek vampire character Ruthven, especially in France, inaugurates a saga of literary undead that will run through the whole of the nineteenth century and will gradually be cleansed of its Greekness, until eventually culminating in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where Transylvania becomes fixed as the pure symbol of vampiric intraEuropean Otherness. 2. Haunting (the) Self: Vampires from the Inside Such an external development, if we may speak in such terms when it comes to a colonial process that inherently undecides the parameters of what is within the state and what is outside it, is transposed and reflected in the internal construction of the nation. Due to the ‘colonization of the ideal’ 14 by the West, soon transformed in what Evangelos Calotychos has called a ‘self-colonization,’ 15 the Greeks had to endeavour from the beginning to conform to the ideal of Hellenism. But, as the vampire, Modern Greece could not reflect in such a mirror. For the Greeks such a disconnection gave rise to the need of obliterating everyday performance and attach to a new model provided by external and internal pedagogy. 16 The actual necessity of burying previous strata of collective identity, such as Ottoman, Slavish, Byzantine or even Jewish, was a condition to leave behind backwardness and fully access modernity and Europeanness. This brought about anxiety regarding self-identity and, most of all, the construction of Greece as a ‘haunted,’ and not just an ‘imagined,’ community, where the repressed elements

 

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__________________________________________________________________ of identity keep returning from the grave. Michael Herzfeld has employed the term disemia to describe such alternation of classicist and presentist versions of the nation, none of which have been able to prevail and to exclude a permanent haunting by the other. 17 Greece is thus constructed as uncanniness insofar as it never becomes a fulfilled presence, but unavoidably alludes to absences and spectres of the past. While it is claimed, in the Philhellenic mentality of the early nineteenth century, to embody the culmination of ontology and of enlightened epistemology through its modern re-foundation, it represents instead the basic instability of every ontological process; in short, what Derrida has called hauntology. 18 The vampire continues to play a key role in all these processes. One of Greece’s most important founding fathers, the enlightened intellectual Adamantios Korais, realised the allegorical importance of such figure. Ιn his work Atakta, an attempt to fix the language of the new nation by means of a dictionary, he tried to cleanse the vrykolakas of Slavic and Ottoman elements by proposing a Classical etymology for the term and providing an Ancient source for the tradition. 19 In spite of this invention, often emulated by later foreign folklorists, his endeavour to bury the vampire once and for all failed and, predictably, the revenant returned, reminding the Greeks of the impossibility of achieving an ontological closure for their identity and of confining ‘Greece’ to a singular definition. Not only did the epidemics of vampirism flourish during the identity-defining anxiety brought about by the Greek War of Independence, but through the whole century foreign ethnographers and travellers continued to mention the vrykolakas as a mark of Greek Otherness and backwardness. In 1910 John Cuthbert Lawson affirmed to have read in Athens news about the burning of an alleged vampire in some small village and of the authorities trying to conceal this fact from foreign visitors out of shame. 20 Likewise, in the 1940s many of the immigrants to the United States could remember stories about vrykolakas heard during their childhood in Greece or Asia Minor. 21 Shame led the Greek authorities and intelligentsia to make the biggest efforts to purge such belief and all its traces in order to project an image of Europeanness, modernity and progress. Both in daily practice and in cultural and official discourse, superstition was fought off as Greece’s mark of Orientalism. The success of this attempt can be judged from the fact that the Cycladic Islands, once known as the ‘home of nymphs and vampires,’ as in the title of George Horton’s 1929 touristic guide, 22 have now been cleansed of dark associations to become a paradise of sunbathing and youth. The effacement of vampirism from the national discourse, however, was neither complete nor uninterrupted. Vampires reappeared in specific periods to allegorise what I call the ‘economy of revenance’ governing Modern Greece, and to bring back to the fore the latent anxiety about national identity. After the first period of radical Classicism following the foundation of the Greek State in 1830, the 1880s

 

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__________________________________________________________________ onwards saw a new period in culture and national discourse which began under the name demoticism. This period involved the re-appropriation of the stages of Greek history that were previously despised, such as Byzantinism or Ottoman Greekness as well as popular language and customs, in opposition to the fixation on Ancient Greece and its European connections. Even if criticised through a patronising discourse about modernisation, superstition reappears in Greek literature at that moment. Many more references to the vrykolakas can be found from 1880 on in literary journals and newspapers, and, most of all, a number of short stories feature this figure for the first time in the nineteenth century. While some of them are contemporary with Western literature of the fantastic, there are some generic differences due to the postcolonial condition of Greece that prevented this genre from completely settling into the national canon. Consequently, these short stories have been mostly forgotten after one century. The fantastic brings to the fore the uncanny that, as we have seen, was distinguished as taboo from the very inception of the new nation as it revealed its constructed nature. Nevertheless, in recovering the folkloric vampire for ‘serious’ literature, these texts thematise the very economy of revenance underlying the oscillations of disemia. The vrykolakas allegorises the fears and the uncanniness implicit in recovering and giving visibility to Greece’s popular and intermediate strata between Ancient Classicism and modernity. In un-burying such relegated parts of the collective self, not only alien but also undesired components of identity could be brought to light. Not only an anxiety about difference but also an anxiety about sameness is at work here. Taking for granted Fredric Jameson’s theory about narrative as an allegory of the nation in colonised countries, 23 it can be said that Greece’s hauntology is clearly allegorised in these stories. The plurality of identities haunting the contemporary Greeks and undermining each other are embodied in the corpse that comes back from the grave to pursue, and occasionally kill, the living. In comparing Greek vampire fiction with European depictions, there is an obvious dissimilitude that betrays Greece’s (self-) colonial difference. While in Western stories the monster is frequently a foreigner, often an Eastern European who threatens the inner harmony of the community from outside, the literary vrykolakes, like the folkloric ones, belong to the national community, even to the same village as their victims, and haunt their friends and relatives from the inside. Like the famous Serbian vampire Arnold Paole, however, they carry a mark of Otherness usually indicating contact with Turks or, in the case of Greece, even Slavs. This fulfils one of the criteria for the Freudian uncanny - the vrykolakas is the familiar that comes back as strange or the strange embodied in the familiar. The repressed plurality of identities through which Greece was initially constructed returns now under a monstrous form to destabilise and weaken the foundations of the community. In the first of these texts, Aristotelis Valaoritis’ Thanasis Vagias (1867), the dead hero who pays a visit to his terrified widow has been accused of committing treason against Greece by revealing national military plans to Turks in

 

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__________________________________________________________________ the Greek War of Independence. 24 The alleged vampire in ‘The Grave of the Excommunicated’ (1926) is discovered to have had secret commercial dealings with Turks, whose revelation to his family and fellow countrymen seems to be the only cause of his vampirisation. 25 While it is not explicitly stated that the vrykolakas in ‘The Son of the Vampire’ (1933) is a Turk, the description of the cave where he lives is reminiscent of Ottoman Palaces, particularly those that the ruling class of the Turkish governors of Greek regions, the pasha, used to inhabit. 26 Since the vampire was always a person excommunicated by the Orthodox Church, Andreas Karkavitsas’ ‘The Excommunicated’ (1888) features a man who is banned from the community for theft, and has to leave his village to go to live among the nomadic Slavs of the mountains before he dies. 27 In other cases it is the transgression of a communal taboo that leads to vampirisation, either for practicing sorcery, as in ‘She did not decompose’ (1908) or for not submitting oneself to collective superstitions, as in ‘The Vampire’ (1895). 28 A fear of not belonging enough, of not being sufficiently pure as a Greek, is at stake here. A motif in folklore itself, intercourse or even marriage with vrykolakes is thematised both in Thanasis Vagias and in ‘The Son of the Vampire’ as the uttermost horror to be endured by a Greek woman. The protagonist in the former proposes to his wife to have a child, which appears to horrify her more than the apparition itself. In the latter the child has already been born, with several monstrous marks that distinguish it as non-human. 29 To conclude, I contend that these short stories allegorise the economy of revenance and the uncanniness involved in the construction of Modern Greece, and express the anxiety about discovering fearful secrets in the body of the national self, especially alien ethnicities and deviant identities. But, unlike the Western representations of alterity through vampirism, the vrykolakas in such a postcolonial context does not embody the fear of ‘reverse colonization,’ 30 as in Stephen Arata’s expression about Dracula, but of ‘reverse self-colonization.’ Structurally entrenched in the core of the national discourse, the uncanny cannot be expelled through linguistic, ethnic or even literary purifications. It keeps returning and exceeding, time and again, the semantic integrity of Greece.

Notes  

1

This research was supported by a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme. 2 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (New York: Routledge, 1994), 83. 3 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); Renée L. Bergland, ‘Diseased States, Public Minds: Native American Ghosts in Early National Literature’, in The

 

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  Gothic Other: Racial and Social Constructions in the Literary Imaginations, eds. Ruth Bienstock and Douglas L. Howard (Jefferson: McFarland, 2004), 102. 4 I use the term ‘spectralisation’ as initially formulated by Derrida, Spectres of Marx, 127. For a full explanation of the term, see Justin D. Edwards, Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature (Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2005), 49. 5 See Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece (Stanford: University Press, 1996) and Katherine E. Fleming, ‘Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography’, The American Historical Review 105 (2000): 1221. 6 Vangelis Calotychos, Modern Greece: A Cultural Poetics (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 49. 7 About the concept of ‘Balkanism,’ see Fleming, ‘Orientalism’. 8 Apart from the references below, see for example Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Relation d’un Voyage du Levant (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1717), 131-136, or François Pétis de la Croix, État Présent des Nations et Églises Grecque, Armenienne et Maronite en Turquie (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1715), 78-81. 9 Antonio de Ferraris, De sytu Japygiae (Basel: Petrus Perna, 1558), 117; Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia Liber III (Lyon: Beringos Fratres, 1531), 430; Martin Kraus, Turcograecia, Book VII (Basel: Leonardus Ostenius, 1584), 490. 10 Tournefort, Rélation, 131-136; Leo Allatius, De Templis Graecorum Recentioribus, De Narthece Ecclesiae Veteris, nec non De Graecorum hodie Quorundam Opinationibus (Colonia: Iodocus Kalcovius, 1645); François Richard, Rélation de ce qui s’est Passé de Plus Remarquable à L’isle de Sant-Erini, Isle de l’Archipel, Depuis L’établissement des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus en Icelle (Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1657); Paul Ricaut, The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches, Anno Christi 1678 Written at the Command of His Majesty (London: John Starkey, 1679); Johann Michael Heineccius, Dissertatio Theologica Inauguralis de Absolutione Mortuorum Excommunicatorum vel Tympanicorum in Ecclesia Graeca (Helmstedt: Georg Wolfgang Hamm, 1709). 11 Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, Vol. VI (London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824), 305. 12 Augustine Calmet, Dissertation sur les Apparitions des Anges, des Démons et des Esprits et sur les Revenans [sic] et Vampires de Hongrie, de Bohème, de Moravie et de Silesie (Paris: De Bure, 1746), 251-252; Gerard Van Swieten, Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster, Nebst einem Anhange vom Vampyrismus (Augsburg 1768), 6. 13 John William Polidori, The Vampyre: A Tale (London: H. Colburn, 1819). 14 See Gourgouris, Dream Nation, 6-7. 15 Vangelis Calotychos, Modern Greece: A Cultural Poetics (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 49.

 

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16

For further explanation of the terms ‘performance’ and ‘pedagogy’ in the (postcolonial) nation, see Homi K. Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 297-299. 17 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 111-122. 18 See Derrida, Spectres, 10. 19 Adamantios Korais, Atakta (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1832-35), Vol. II, 85 and Vol. V, 31. 20 John C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals (Cambridge: University Press, 1910), 364. 21 Dorothy Demetracopoulou Lee, ‘Greek Accounts of the Vrykolakas’, The Journal of American Folklore 55 (1942): 126-132. 22 George Horton, Home of Nymphs and Vampires: The Greek Isles (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1929). 23 Fredric Jameson, ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’, Social Text 15 (1986): 65-88. 24 Aristotelis Valaoritis, Thanasis Vagias (Athens: Mermingas, 1990). 25 Konstantinos Kazantzis, ‘To Mnima tou Aforesmenou’, in To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima, Vol. I, ed. Makis Panorios (Athens: Eolos, 1987), 75-82. 26 Achileas Paraschos, ‘O Gyios tou Vrykolaka’, in To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima, Vol. II, 185-190. 27 Andreas Karkavitsas, ‘O Aforesmenos’, in Diigimata (Athens: Estia, 1982), 90130. 28 Christos Christovassilis, ‘I Alioti’, in To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima, Vol. III, 319-324; Kostas Pasagiannis, ‘O Vrykolakas’, in To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima, Vol. I, 235-240. 29 Valaoritis, Thanasis Vagias, 24; Paraschos, ‘O Gyios tou Vrykolaka’, 188. 30 Stephen Arata, ‘The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization’, Victorian Studies 33 (1990): 621-645.

Bibliography Agrippa, Cornelius. De Occulta Philosophia Liber III. Lyon: Beringos Fratres, 1531. Allatius, Leo. De Templis Graecorum Recentioribus, De Narthece Ecclesiae Veteris, nec non De Graecorum hodie Quorundam Opinationibus. Colonia: Iodocus Kalcovius, 1645.

 

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  Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Arata, Stephen. ‘The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization’. Victorian Studies 33 (1990): 621–645. Bergland, Renée L. ‘Diseased States, Public Minds: Native American Ghosts in Early National Literature’. In The Gothic Other: Racial and Social Constructions in the Literary Imaginations, edited by Ruth Bienstock, and Douglas L. Howard, 90–103. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004. Bhabha, Homi K. ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’. In Nation and Narration, edited by Homi K. Bhabha, 291–322. London: Routledge, 1990. Calmet, Augustine. Dissertation sur les Apparitions des Anges, des Démons et des Esprits et sur les Revenans [sic] et Vampires de Hongrie, de Bohème, de Moravie et de Silesie. Paris: De Bure, 1746. Calotychos, Vangelis. Modern Greece: A Cultural Poetics. Oxford: Bergland, 2003. Christovassilis, Christos. ‘I Alioti’. In To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima, Vol. III, edited by Makis Panorios, 319–324. Athens: Eolos, 1987. De Ferraris, Antonio. De situ Japygiae. Basel: Petrus Perna, 1558. Demetracopoulou, Lee D. ‘Greek Accounts of the Vrykolakas’. The Journal of American Folklore 55 (1942): 126–132. Derrida, Jacques. Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York: Routledge, 1994. De Tournefort, Joseph Pitton. Relation d’un Voyage du Levant, fait par Ordre du Roy. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1717. Edwards, Justin D. Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2005. Fleming, Katherine E. ‘Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography’. The American Historical Review 105 (2000): 1218–1233.

 

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  Gourgouris, Stathis. Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Heineccius, Johann Michael. Dissertatio Theologica Inauguralis De Absolutione Mortuorum Excommunicatorum vel Tympanicorum in Ecclesia Graeca. Helmstedt: Georg Wolfgang Hamm, 1709. Herzfeld, Michael. Anthropology through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Horton, George. Home of Nymphs and Vampires: The Greek Isles. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1929. Jameson, Fredric. ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’. Social Text 15 (1986): 65–88. Karkavitsas, Andreas. Diigimata. Athens: Estia, 1982. Kazantzis, Konstantinos. ‘To Mnima tou Aforesmenou’. In To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima, Vol. I, edited by Makis Panorios, 75–82. Athens: Eolos, 1987. Korais, Adamantios. Atakta. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1832-35. Kraus, Martin. Turcograeciae Libri Octo: Quibus Graecorum Status Sub Imperio Turcico, in Politia et Ecclesia, Oeconomia et Scholis, iam inde ab Amissa Constantinopoli, ad haec usque Tempora, Luculenter Describitur. Basel: Leonardus Ostenius, 1584. Lawson, John Cuthbert. Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. Panorios, Makis. To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima. Athens: Eolos, 1987. Paraschos, Achileas. ‘O Gyios tou Vrykolaka’. In To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima, Vol. II, edited by Makis Panorios, 185–190. Athens: Eolos, 1987. Pasagiannis, Kostas. ‘O Vrykolakas’. In To Eliniko Fantastiko Diigima, Vol. I, edited by Makis Panorios, 235–240. Athens: Eolos, 1987. Pétis de la Croix, François. État Présent des Nations et Églises Grecque, Armenienne et Maronite en Turquie. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1715.

 

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  Polidori, John William. The Vampyre: A Tale. London: H. Colburn, 1819. Ricaut, Paul. The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches, Anno Christi 1678 Written at the Command of His Majesty. London: John Starkey, 1679. Richard, François. Rélation de ce qui s’est Passé de Plus Remarquable à L’isle de Sant-Erini, Isle de l’Archipel, Depuis L’établissement des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus en Icelle. Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1657. Valaoritis, Aristotelis. Thanasis Vagias. Athens: Mermingas, 1990. Van Swieten, Gerard. Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster, Nebst einem Anhange vom Vampyrismus. Augsburg 1768. Voltaire. A Philosophical Dictionary. Translated by John G. Gorton. London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824. Álvaro García Marín is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Columbia University. He is currently conducting a research on Modern Greek fantastic fiction, especially on the figure of the Greek vampire, the vrykolakas, and its implications in the process of national construction.

 

Thing without Form: Peter Ackroyd’s Monstrous City Marta Komsta Abstract The chapter examines three monstrous archetypes presented in the selected novels by Peter Ackroyd - The House of Doctor Dee (1993), Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) and The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008) - as an indication of a peculiar alignment of the uncanny with the urban, a transgressive alliance resulting in the creation of a contemporary urban mythology based upon the idea of artificial life. The homunculus, the golem and Frankenstein’s monster are approached here as an instance of the urban abject as well as the doppelganger of the novels’ main characters. The core of my analysis is the complex relationship developed between the abject protagonist and the city, in which the latter both encompasses and rejects the former. As it happens, such ambivalence points to the maladies plaguing the polis in times past and present, as well as signals the potential threats to its future. It is, at the same time, a question about the very nature of the city, its semiotic underworld and the possibility of discovering the Transcendental Signifier in the serpentine streets of the postmodern urbanscape. It is therefore my contention that the subversive semiotic potential of Ackroyd’s characters and their monstrous incarnations paradoxically conditions the metaphysical foundations of the megalopolis. Key Words: The city, monster, the abject, semiosphere, golem, homunculus. ***** 1. Introduction According to Peter Ackroyd, a writer who was once hailed as ‘the man who would be king of literary London,’ to know the city is to let one be consumed and eventually transformed by the metropolis. 1 What William Gibson calls ‘metrophagy’ is Ackroyd’s lifework; an essentially carnivalesque endeavour suspended between the practice of psychogeography and occult literary rituals with which the writer attempts to call forth the monstrous nocturnal London that lurks disconcertingly close to its daytime double. 2 The task of reading the city-text may be thus described as a continual process of challenging the palimpsestic nature of the postmodern urbanscape in search of singularity. As Ackroyd argues, ‘London seems to be all flow without any solidity, it is a mobile and fluid city; it’s constantly being rebuilt and vandalized, there’s no thing as a fixed condition.’ 3 His novels, commencing with the 1982 debut The Great Fire of London, up to 2008 The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, reveal the London-based writer’s incessant striving to approximate the postmodern megalopolis, a seemingly unstructured

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__________________________________________________________________ semiotic system that has displaced its Transcendental Signifier, the ultimate ‘sign which will give meaning to all others.’ 4 According to Richard Lehan, [w]ithout a transcendental signifier, urban signs begin to float, and meaning gives way to mystery. [...] What we bring to the city is what we get back: the “echo” principle becomes the basis for our reality. […] The signs - failing to point toward a redeeming God […], or a redeeming history […], or a redeeming nature […], or a redeeming art […] - become self-referential. 5 The semiotic complexity of Ackroyd’s literary urbanscapes is reflected in the relationship his protagonists establish with the city. By attempting to restore meaning to their existence by the means of the polis, these characters share the inherent maladjustment with the tangible reality that compels them to, as Susana Onega observes, ‘undertake a quest for knowledge that would allow them to transcend phenomenological reality and to master the transcendental reality that gives meaning and coherence to the cosmos.’ 6 Semiotic-wise, the protagonists’ transformation is a process of radical re-appropriation that is negotiated through the exploration of the peripheries of the urban semiosphere. 7 Such places, frequently associated in Ackroyd’s fiction with specific London districts, constitute the (un)natural habitat for the monstrous Other that one is forced to confront in order to assert one’s identity. As Elaine L. Graham notices, ‘monsters have a double function […] simultaneously marking the boundaries between the normal and the pathological but also exposing the fragility of the very taken-forgrantedness of such categories.’ 8 In effect, the monster symbolises the city’s impact upon the individual that forces one to challenge the Other-within, whose presence is progressively externalised as the protagonist ventures deeper into the urban landscape. I argue that the process of identity making in Ackroyd’s fiction is developed through the agency of the monster that represents the repressed aspects of the character’s semiotic profile, the ‘radically separate, loathsome’ countersign of the abject that comes into light illuminated by the influence of the metropolis. 9 The resulting self-awareness is then an identity forming process as interpretative mechanisms employed by the protagonists are radically transformed by enforcing a new reading of the city as well as themselves. In sum, the core semiotic dichotomy between the urban centre and the peripheries is reflected in multiple oppositions between the subject and the abject, the Self and the Other, human and monster. Thus, the novels selected for the purpose of this chapter, The House of Doctor Dee (1993), Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) and The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008), share the idea of monstrosity as the embodiment of transgressive semiosis as well as an alternative meaning generator in the narratives’ semiotic framework. Finally, I would like to suggest that the abject

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__________________________________________________________________ conditions the transcendental layer in Ackroyd’s novels as the characters develop what Susana Onega describes as ‘transhistorical connectedness,’ a profoundly intimate connection with one’s cultural and spiritual heritage that enables Ackroyd’s protagonists to reclaim their fractured identity. 10 2. In Search of Self In the urban semiosphere of Ackroyd’s fiction, the monstrous signifies those aspects that are subdued and suppressed, a semiotic ‘vortex of summons and repulsions’ that stands in opposition to the normative semiosis. 11 Ackroyd’s monsters are inevitably the doppelganger of his protagonists, functioning as the reversal of their socially viable counterparts. Simultaneously, acknowledging the existence of the repressed is the decisive factor in the cathartic transformation ‘from ego to eidos, from the individual to the archetypal,’ as the abject enables one to re-/deconstruct him/herself by providing a semiotic outlet to the signs that counteract the dominant modes of meaning. 12 Most importantly, however, the clash with the monster marks the turning point in the protagonists’ development, forcing them to become the Other - the antiprotagonist whose core semiotic paradigm is based upon continual subversion of the central semiosis. For Elizabeth Cree, a murderess extraordinaire in Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, the eponymous entity functions as her double through which she is allowed to transgress the cultural preconceptions of femininity. The notion of performativity is at the forefront here. Elizabeth is an actress actively performing herself in many different guises - that of Lambeth Marsh Lizzie, a penny gaff entertainer, Elizabeth Cree, the wife to John Cree, and finally, the Limehouse Golem, a male serial killer. The monster constitutes the only fixed part of the fragmented self, a name that evokes the myth of the protector as well as its subversive re-appropriation since the Golem is now a prowler, a flaneur of murderous inclinations. 13 By taking on the role of both a man and a murderer, Elizabeth actively re-enacts and overthrows the established assumptions pertaining to the role of woman as that of the nurturer. The Other gives her the chance to abolish the dominant semiosis and manifest her role of the transgender killer, the defender turning oppressor, the victim becoming the punisher. It is also an act of violent rebellion against the affixed morality of the centre. The Golem is a divine messenger that brings punishment upon the inhabitants of the dark city, the ominous doppelganger to God’s life-giving competence. ‘I am the scourge of God,’ Elizabeth proclaims. 14 ‘I saved [God] half the job,’ the protagonist adds, ‘I took away.’ 15 The act of semiotic haunting as the protagonist becomes possessed by the abject is also foregrounded in The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein in which, akin to its literary predecessor, the infamous scientist becomes obsessed with the idea of creating artificial life. A close correspondence between the central character and the Other is developed in which the latter signifies the repressed elements of the

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__________________________________________________________________ former’s personality. The monstrosity that is brought into existence is the abject embodied that stalks its creator with questions pertaining to the morality of creating unnatural life. The desire to build a ‘sentient human being […] unencumbered by class or society or faith’ quickly turns into ungodly usurpation of divine prerogatives as the monster almost immediately asserts itself as the double of the scholar, its physical deformity and malevolent character reflecting Victor’s vanity and egotism. 16 The subsequent killing spree commenced by the undead is a parodic rendition of Victor’s attempts at restoring life and simultaneously an act of vengeance exerted upon the creator who refuses to take responsibility for the existence he has brought into the world. ‘There is no substance […] without a shadow,’ states the creature, forcing the protagonist to acknowledge the affinity between them. 17 The final revelation of the undead being the emanation of the scientist’s split personality points acutely to the function of the abject as that of the generator of transgressive semiosis that succeeds in overpowering the moral norms of the centre adopted by the protagonist. Yet, confronting the Other allows Ackroyd’s characters to transcend the limitations of selfhood, to redeem and reconstruct themselves as they successfully challenge the monster inside. In The House of Doctor Dee, Matthew Palmer inherits a house that once belonged to the famous Elizabethan magus John Dee. The house, ‘a transdimensional door’ 18 that enables the protagonist to cross the boundaries of time and space, shelters Dee’s most cherished achievement - the recipe for creating the homunculus, a creature of minuscule proportions that represents the divine spark of creation, ‘that fire that drives the spheres.’ 19 Imbued with potent spiritual significance, the homunculus represents the cosmic man, ‘the secret of all secrets’ endowed with eternal life. 20 The discovery of the recipe marks a turning point for the protagonist by activating concealed information connected with his past. As Matthew becomes gradually convinced that he himself is the alchemic progeny of the renowned scholar, a semiotic correlation is formed between the protagonist and the Other. The homunculus’ generic amnesia - ‘it remembers nothing about its past or future until it returns home at the end of its thirty years’ - is mirrored in Matthew’s lack of childhood memories which, it is revealed, are suppressed by the experience of abuse. 21 The act of acknowledging the repressed knowledge is then an act of liberation for the character, who reclaims his identity. A similar epiphany takes place in connection with the novel’s other major protagonist, John Dee, who has a vision in which the spirit of his deceased wife expounds the futility of intellectual pursuits devoid of love. The search for the homunculus, the symbol of Dee’s striving towards transcendence, is revealed to be an elaborate illusion that has obstructed the protagonist’s metaphysical ascension for, Katherine explains, ‘faith must be placed in love and not in wisdom.’ 22 Ultimately, the recognition that enlightenment is found in ‘surrendering and not in power’ allows Dee to confront the fear of mortality that he strives to overcome through occult research. 23

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__________________________________________________________________ 3. Exploring the Monstropolis The confrontation with the abject takes place in the peripheries of the given semiosphere that represent ‘chaos, the anti-world, unstructured chthonic space, inhabited by monsters, infernal powers or people associated with them,’ signifying accordingly the semiotic underbelly of the megalopolis where the abject is situated. 24 In this context, the monstrous functions as a vessel that channels the forces of the underworld, its semiosis transgressing the accepted norms. In Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, the golem symbolises ‘some dark spirit’ of the city that is believed to be ‘somehow responsible for the evil.’ 25 The Other is here the master of ceremonies that conducts savage rituals upon the stage of the urban theatrum mundi. The act of murder appearing ‘before the scenery of a massive and monstrous city’ is a sacrifice to ‘a sinister, crepuscular London, a haven for strange powers, a city of footsteps and flaring lights, of houses packed close together, of lachrymose alleys and false doors.’ 26 London, ‘a labyrinth of stone, a wilderness of blank walls and doors,’ is transformed into a city-beast, a monstrous entity whose emissaries are, among others, serial killers, both real (such as John Williams) and fictitious (Elizabeth Cree), possessed by its malodorous spirit. 27 ‘[I]t seemed to me as if the whole city were trembling in anticipation of some great change,’ states the Limehouse Golem and adds, ‘at that moment, I felt proud to be entrusted with its powers of expression. I had become its messenger as I walked towards Limehouse.’ 28 Another example of what might be described as urban possession appears in The House of Doctor Dee in which the peripheries are represented by the London of the abject, the homeless and the vagabonds, ‘the army of the night’ spiritually and physically debilitated by the malignant influence of the metropolis that ‘by some strange alchemy drained away their spirit.’ 29 The city is a carnivore that ‘had grown steadily larger by encroaching upon, and subduing, the energy of its inhabitants.’ 30 Eventually, the city of the abject is the reflection of an even greater monstrosity - the entirety of human civilisation. In The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, London is the new Babylon whose underworld, ‘this fetid body growth,’ flaunts its depravity in front of the protagonist, its monstrousness depriving him of ‘the last vestiges of Christian faith.’ 31 As it was the case with the golem, Frankenstein’s creation is a conduit for the city’s violent impact upon its dwellers. The connection between the monster and the capital becomes obvious through the indication of moral and physical hideousness of both parties, the former clearly indicating the latter’s ‘malevolent presence.’ 32 The metropolis, ‘some great, dark shape brooding in the distance,’ is depicted as humanity’s ultimate creation and a bitter commentary to its creative abilities. 33 ‘Man had created London,’ Victor concludes. 34 The city thus represents the civilisation in miniature, a microcosm of suffering whose inherent depravity is confirmed in the words of the undead: ‘Am I monstrous? Or are you monstrous? Is the world monstrous?’ 35

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__________________________________________________________________ Similarly, in The House of Doctor Dee, the scholar enters the vision of ‘the world without love’ in which London is inhabited by tormented citizens who ‘seemed to be pacing the dungeon of the night, a night which was a nurse of cares, a mother of despair, and a daughter of hell itself.’ 36 The infernal landscape forces the protagonist to confront his dread of mortality as he witnesses his own execution followed by a ‘lesson in anatomy’ conducted by Queen Elizabeth I upon the battered corpse of the magus. 37 The urban mirages unfolding in front of John Dee and Victor Frankenstein function then as the reflection of the characters’ inner turmoil, as well as a reminder of the two-way connection between the protagonist and the city, in which the megalopolis, mankind’s very own monster, is responsible for the abject semiosis that eventually deconstructs its inhabitants. At the same time, the journey through the urban underworld commences the process of redefinition for the polis and its dwellers. The act of re-constructing meaning occurs at the boundary of the urban semiosphere as the characters cross the often imperceptible line between the subject and the abject, between what is deemed socially and morally acceptable and what lies beyond the fixed norms and regulations. What is accentuated here is the existence of arcane knowledge accessible to those who have crossed the boundary between the centre and the peripheries, the knowledge of a transcendental connection shared by those who are by definition ‘always set outside.’ 38 Pondering upon the grisly urban environment, Doctor Dee observes that [y]et it was here […] that I conducted my studies philosophical and experimental; among the clamour, and almost in the very midst of the stinking crowd, I searched within the bright glass of nature and the exhalations of the spiritus mundi. 39 The city of the abject becomes a gateway into transcendence as the protagonist must acknowledge her defilement before she can reach for the Absolute ‘in the belly of the monster Leviathan.’ 40 It is also a process consisting of semiotic crises while Ackroyd’s characters attempt to ‘find a way out of this mundus tenebrosus’ in their search for the urban Transcendental Signifier. 41 For those who have successfully followed the path from agos (defilement) to katharmos (transcendence), the ultimate convolution is the confirmation of the mystical link between the city and its inhabitants. 42 As exemplified in the closing paragraph of The House of Doctor Dee, the communion, symbolised by the ‘shimmering bridge’ that connects the city with its inhabitants, is the moment of redemption for those who have successfully penetrated the urban Underworld: 43 Oh you, who tried to find the light within all things, help me to create another bridge across two shores. And so join with me, in celebration. Come closer, come towards me so that we may

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__________________________________________________________________ become one. Then will London be redeemed, now and for ever, and all those with whom we dwell - living or dead - will become the mystical city universal. 44 It may thus be argued that Ackroyd’s monsters are emblems of the city’s rejuvenating abilities, its powers of regeneration, as well as testament to the creative forces of humanity. Taking into consideration Ackroyd’s predilection for pastiche and parody, it might be therefore possible to approach the idea of monstrosity as a parodic act of creation as the writer brings forth new texts, the progeny of more famous predecessors. The Golem of Jewish legends, Paracelsus’ homunculus and Frankenstein’s creature are revitalised in Ackroyd’s fiction in the manner of a peculiar homage that aims both ‘to enshrine the past and to question it.’ 45 ‘You asked me if I raised the dead; no, I raise new life…’ is Doctor Dee’s response to the accusation of practising black magic. 46 The monster, the offspring of man’s intimate affiliation with the cityscape, is the embodiment of Adam Kadmon, the Universal Man, striving to break free from the shackles of mortality. It is ‘an emblem of Klippoth and a shell of degraded matter. […] We give it life in our own image. We breathe our own spirit into its shape.’ 47 The abject, the inseparable part of selfhood, a semiotic countersign to be acknowledged and reappropriated, is both a guide to follow and an obstacle to overcome on the urban stairway to heaven that many of Ackroyd’s characters begin climbing but few actually reach the last steps. The monstropolis and the Eternal City intertwined account then for the metaphysical potential in what Gibson called a city in which the eternal suffering of the poor may perpetually serve some mysterious and driving purpose in the life of the whole some hidden dynamo of torture and sacrifice dating back to something stranger and less easily articulated than the hungry ghosts of Hawksmoor. 48 Perhaps this something points to Ackroyd’s ambivalent understanding of the city as the golem of ‘no meaning and form,’ a monster with the divine word etched upon its forehead. 49

Notes 1

Will Self, ‘Don’t Have any More, Mrs Moore: Is Peter Ackroyd a Cockney Mystic or One of Our Greatest Scholars? A Visionary or Bombast? Will Self on the Man Who Would be King of Literary London’, New Statesman, November 4, 2002, accessed April 10, 2012, http://www.newstatesman.com/node/144170.

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William Gibson, ‘Metrophagy: The Art and Science of Digesting Large Cities’, Whole Earth 108 (2001): 38. 3 Jeremy Gibson and Julian Wolfreys: Peter Ackroyd. The Ludic and Labyrinthine Text (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 2000), 258. 4 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 113. 5 Richard Lehan, The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998), 265266. 6 Susana Onega Jaen, ‘The Descent to the Underworld and the Transition from Ego to Eidos in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd’, in Beyond Borders: Redefining Generic and Ontological Boundaries, eds. Ramón Plo-Alastrue and María Jesús Martínez (Heidelberg: Alfaro.Winter, 2002), 163. 7 I am using the term ‘semiosphere’ in accordance with Yuri M. Lotman’s definition of the term as ‘the whole semiotic space of the culture in question.’ Yuri M. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (London and New York: I. B. Tauris and Co. Ltd, 1990), 125. 8 Elaine L. Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 39. 9 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 2. 10 Susana Onega Jean, Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999), 191. 11 Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 1. 12 Onega Jean, ‘Descent to the Underworld’, 163. 13 I am referring here to the legend of the Golem of Prague allegedly created by Rabbi Loew in the sixteenth century. For further reference see, for example, Graham, Representations of the Post/Human. 14 Peter Ackroyd, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (London: Vintage Books, 1998), 266. 15 Ibid., 273. 16 Peter Ackroyd, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (London: Chatto & Windus, 2008), 121. 17 Ibid., 163. 18 Onega Jean, Metafiction and Myth, 121. 19 Peter Ackroyd, The House of Doctor Dee (London: Penguin Books, 1994), 104. 20 Ibid., 123. 21 Ibid., 125.

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Ibid., 256. Ibid. 24 Lotman, The Universe of the Mind, 140. 25 Ibid., 162. 26 Ibid., 38. 27 Ibid., 39. 28 Ibid., 85. 29 Ackroyd, House of Doctor Dee, 47. 30 Ibid., 48. 31 Ackroyd, Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, 15. 32 Ibid., 233. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 293. 36 Ackroyd, House of Doctor Dee, 205. 37 Ibid., 216. 38 Lotman, The Universe of the Mind, 140. 39 Ackroyd, House of Doctor Dee, 62-63. 40 Ibid., 62. 41 Onega Jean, ‘Descent to the Underworld’, 171. 42 Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 84. 43 Ackroyd, House of Doctor Dee, 17. 44 Ibid., 277. 45 Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 126. 46 Ackroyd, House of Doctor Dee, 36. 47 Ackroyd, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, 68. 48 Gibson, ‘Metrophagy’, 38. 49 Tim Teeman, ‘London is a Uniquely Brutalising and Ugly City; Interview: Peter Ackroyd’, The Times, September 23, 2000, accessed March 20, 2012, http://www.thetimes.co.uk. 23

Bibliography Ackroyd, Peter. The House of Doctor Dee. London: Penguin Books, 1994. —––. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. London: Vintage Books, 1998. —––. The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. London: Chatto & Windus, 2008.

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__________________________________________________________________ Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Gibson, Jeremy, and Julian Wolfreys. Peter Ackroyd: The Ludic and Labyrinthine Text. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 2000. Gibson, William. ‘Metrophagy: The Art and Science of Digesting Large Cities’. Whole Earth 108 (2001): 38. Graham, Elaine L. Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York, London: Routledge, 1996. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Lehan, Richard. The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998. Lotman, Yuri M. The Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London, New York: I. B. Tauris and Co. Ltd, 1990. Onega, Susana Jaen. Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999. —––. ‘The Descent to the Underworld and the Transition from Ego to Eidos in The Novels of Peter Ackroyd’. In Beyond Borders: Redefining Generic and Ontological Boundaries, edited by Ramón Plo-Alastrue, and María Jesús Martínez, 157–174. Heidelberg: Alfaro, Winter 2002. Self, Will. ‘Don’t Have any More, Mrs Moore: Is Peter Ackroyd a Cockney Mystic or One of Our Greatest Scholars? A Visionary or Bombast? Will Self on the Man Who Would be King of Literary London’. New Statesman, November 4, 2002. Accessed April 10, 2012. http://www.newstatesman.com/node/144170. Teeman, Tim. ‘London is a Uniquely Brutalising and Ugly City; Interview: Peter Ackroyd’. The Times, September 23, 2000. Accessed March 20, 2012. http://www.thetimes.co.uk.

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__________________________________________________________________ Marta Komsta is a lecturer at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin. Her main areas of research are contemporary Gothic narratives and utopia/dystopia in film and literature.

F(r)iends in Low Places: Monstrous Identities in Contemporary Esotericism William Redwood Abstract This chapter summarises the darkest and deepest parts of the author’s PhD research into contemporary esoteric cosmology. Although this universe owes much to Christianity, it draws heavily on youth subcultures, Romanticism, popular science and various literary and cinematic genres. The result is a quite unique spiritual topography. A map of such a landscape will be sketched, both this-worldly and other-worldly, and particular attention will be paid to a lower, demonic dimension, which is crucial to all esoteric practices, but especially the darker ones. The argument then moves beyond the descriptive level and works to establish the following points. First, on the level of religious theory, despite its monstrous dimension’s infernal origins in Christian constructs of hell, esotericism actually gives us an example of a ‘cosmorphological’ rather than ‘world religion’ type. However, the lower realms we are presented with are also unlike traditional underworlds in several important respects. Second, on a more general theoretical level, this analysis of the monstrous shows that structuralism can still be surprisingly useful, even while we have to work our way beyond it. Third, on a practical level, the stigmatisation of the occult community can be at least partially explained if the monstrous aspects of its cosmology and aesthetics are examined and read properly - we can see monstrous identities which critics have tended to misunderstand. Finally, after such an analysis, Western esotericism can be seen for what it is - a predictable product of contemporary culture. Key Words: Cosmology, demonology, esotericism, identity, New Age, poststructuralism, religion, spirituality. ***** 1. Introduction This chapter deals with an entire social group (variously described as a subculture, a scene, a spiritual community or a New Religious Movement), and overall, the theory behind it is probably more classical than cutting edge. Contemporary esotericism is conveniently glossed simply as ‘magic’ by those involved with it, and problematically labelled ‘New Age’ by those who are not. It has been traced back to the Renaissance, and Brian Gibbons has shown three of its major inspirations to be Gnosticism, pre-Socratic ancient Greek philosophy and Christian Neoplatonism. 1 Some of its ideas were once relatively mainstream but moved over the centuries to a marginal position. As Antoine Faivre has outlined, esoteric magic fundamentally involves a ‘doctrine of correspondences,’ analogies

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__________________________________________________________________ between apparently discrete aspects of the universe (such as body, mind and planets). 2 There is therefore a blurred distinction between an individual’s inner world or psyche and the outer material world. Esotericists hold that the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm and vice versa. They believe that one can effect change in the outer world and alter or transmute the individual self. The latter process, involving inner spiritual growth, increased spiritual awareness, psychic development or gnosis, is considered just as important as transforming the outside world, perhaps even more so. All such ends are sought through meditative, ritual and divinatory practices. Finally, as Susan Greenwood has shown, a non-physical or metaphysical realm, an otherworld, is integral to magic. 3 Much magical practice involves interactions with denizens of this otherworld and hence, as Jenny Blain has stressed, there are markedly shamanistic elements to it. 4 Reducing any worldview to a paragraph is crass, and in this case it is especially problematic, indeed paradoxical, because esoteric spirituality is notoriously protean and personal. To the uninitiated, moreover, some or all of the above may seem quite perplexing. However, the reader may rest assured that all that matters here is the final notion - the existence of other dimensions and their occupants. All the points which are to be made about the geography of the monstrous within contemporary esotericism follow from this. 2. Searching High and Low Within a Christian framework, it is common for heaven to be located up above this earthly realm and hell down below it. Esoteric spirituality owes a great deal to Christianity, and this binary between the celestial and infernal realms is one example. In terms of colour symbolism, the celestial realms are often associated with light and white, and the infernal realms tend to be associated with darkness and the colour black. Amongst esotericists, there is a very obvious tension between ‘white’ and ‘black’ magic, also distinguished as ‘high magic’ and ‘low magic,’ with practitioners also said to take either the ‘right-hand’ or ‘left-hand’ path. So far there is little unusual (by the standards of Christian or post-Christian Western culture) in binaries between high and low, black and white and right and left. However, in our case things are not quite so simple because much contemporary magic centres on ‘nature’ and ‘green’ places. Thus, in the esoteric worldview we find a third space, not a limbo or purgatory but an elaboratelydeveloped intermediate zone based on what is perceived to be natural. It is Romanticism rather than Christianity in which we find the origins of this, and it presents us with an additional zone interposed between the other two. These realms are the focus of both spiritual practice and aesthetics. Practitioners (believe they can) leave the physical realm and visit the higher, middle or lower worlds. On a more mundane level, these worlds are a rich source of symbolism, often reflected, for example, in clothing and interior design. As for the relation between these zones of the otherworld and the physical places chosen

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__________________________________________________________________ for ritual activity, there can be a direct correlation. Rituals are performed on hilltops, in woods and in subterranean locales. It does have to be added, however, that it is often impractical to do so, and rituals are just as likely to be performed in practitioners’ homes. Scholars of religion distinguish ‘world religions’ with a stress on universal salvation of some sort from ‘primal’ or ‘traditional’ religions which tend to focus more on the here and now. 5 Although its origins lie partly in a so-called world religion, contemporary esotericism is very much the latter insofar as it is explicitly cosmological or cosmorphological. At the same time, however, despite its claims to be inspired by ‘traditional religions,’ we actually find that the underworld of contemporary esotericism is unique in several important ways. 3. Underworld Updates The underworld of contemporary esotericism can be subterranean and/or fiery, but it can also be conceptualised in a modern industrial way, as a sewer, boiler room or subway system. As one might expect, in the darker realms of the esoteric universe lurk monsters and demons. There is an unprecedented, perhaps heterotopic array of them - space and time collapse and variously monstrous creatures from different historical periods and geographical zones collide. Esotericism has always been syncretic and perennialist. It is now also thoroughly globalised. Tibetan hungry ghosts and ancient Egyptian mummies coincide with the vampires of European folklore and demons from medieval manuscripts. More recent fears are also reflected, with Kenneth Grant (a pupil of Aleister Crowley) claiming that new gateways to other dimensions were opened by the first nuclear tests in the 1940s. 6 Our demons can now be atomic, or even alien. Fictional entities such as the Great Old Ones of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu tales feature. The esoteric justification for the acceptance of such beings as inspirational or even sacred is that they represent Archetypes in the Jungian sense and so for the esotericist, nothing is purely fictional. 7 Esotericists who are oriented towards the light relate predominantly to angelic beings, while those who occupy the green ‘middleground’ will relate more to nature spirits, elves, faeries and elementals. Perhaps because of the sheer variety of otherworldly beings they may encounter, esotericists denote them by many different referents, and ultimately all are seen as being accumulations of ‘energy,’ a notion which is significantly scientistic. The next question to address is whether such a being or ‘energy’ is an external force or an aspect of an esotericist’s own psyche. As noted in our initial definition, the esotericist is in an interesting position regarding whether or not the outside world is really external or somehow part of (or at least related to) the self. As Greenwood has noted, we inevitably have the same ambivalence with the otherworld. 8 Faced with the question of whether it lies ‘within’ or ‘without,’ esoteric magicians are unwilling to answer, and see it as a pointless enquiry. This is a highly culturally-specific version of the otherworld,

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__________________________________________________________________ which brings us some way into the realms of both the agnostic and the psychologistic. The precise form of psychology in question is, once again, Jungian. The result of it is that the underworld (indeed, any level of the otherworld) is doubly relativised within esotericism. It is relative to a specific culture which, as esotericists say, explains why it occurs in many religions but is portrayed in very different ways. Secondly, it is relative to a specific esotericist, meaning that as well as being filtered through a specific culture, experience of the otherworld is filtered through an individual personality. An otherworldly realm then is a ‘psychoscape,’ and any entity therein can be an aspect of the unconscious. The strong presence of the personal and psychological within esotericism is a product of wider contemporary culture. Within Western psychoanalytic thought, the unconscious (of whatever kind) is generally located downwards. When one thinks about it, however, the unconscious is simply a portion of the mind which is not conscious most of the time. Locating it downwards is every bit as arbitrary as locating it upwards, sideways or behind. Despite the constructed nature of this location, Westerners accept the conventional location of the unconscious as ‘below,’ in the place where hell once used to be. Those esotericists who specifically focus their practice on a lower unconscious mind are those who are perceived as following the dark path. All esotericists accept the existence of deeper psycho-spiritual realms infested with demons but their attitude towards them varies crucially. Dark esotericists see these realms as a source of knowledge, power or self-transformation. Those more influenced by Romanticism tend to focus on aspects of or models of an unconscious mind which are ultimately positive and, most importantly, natural but repressed and strangulated by modern civilisation. The esotericists more inclined towards the celestial focus on a Higher Consciousness or Higher Self. Obviously, in all cases we find ourselves somewhat removed from mainstream psychology. 4. Monstrous Morality? As we are dealing with monstrous spirituality, the question is raised as to how monstrous those on esotericism’s dark side are in their day to day dealings. Making a moral judgement of any group is never easy, and here the situation is particularly complex. While there is a putatively psychotherapeutic dimension to dark esotericism, there is more going on than enchanted psychology. Followers of the left-hand path may evoke demons in order to make pacts with them to help them stop smoking, but they may also summon them up and send them off to magically attack their enemies. Anti-nomianism is declared with Aleister Crowley’s ‘[D]o what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’ being the best-known example, an exhortation to follow one’s own spiritual path without compromise. 9 In practice, this comes to mean libertarianism rather than outright unpleasantness to all and sundry. While one has a right to self-defence, bullies or abusers quickly find themselves isolated. Though not unknown, physical violence is relatively rare.

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__________________________________________________________________ Magical attack or cursing is far more common but of course this causes no empirical harm. Less harmless is the fact that while white magicians tend to be ascetic or health-conscious when it comes to lifestyle, black magicians can drink and use drugs (both ritually and recreationally), which has caused problems for some individuals. Dark esotericism can be criticised for being androcentric, in terms of both its practitioners’ gender and their thinking. Although there are females involved with it, they tend to be in the minority, and other schools of esotericism claim to have a more balanced male-female ratio and outlook. Black magic can also be criticised for being politically right-wing in its stress on individualism and self-reliance. There are also suspicions that it is racist but these have yet to be substantiated; racism can co-exist with many and various religious paths but it does not seem to be essentially linked to dark esotericism. On the other hand, even when it is being ostensibly positive toward the Other, all esotericism is vulnerable to the charge of cultural theft and homogenisation of diverse subaltern traditions. Similarly, charges of narcissism and various other entanglements with late capitalism can be levelled (justly or otherwise) at esotericism as a whole. On the positive side, there is always some sort of moral code constraining lefthand path behaviour. While provoked hostility may not be forbidden, it needs to be said that with their ‘eye for an eye’ mentality, black magicians are not open to charges of hypocrisy in the way that some religious communities, including esoteric ones, can be. Darker esotericism has been said to be less middle-class than the other forms of esotericism, and at least some of the criticism it attracts can perhaps be explained in these terms. Due to its being extremely liberal or even wilfully transgressive, the left-hand path allows for certain possibilities which are foreclosed by other esoteric schools and religions: sexual identities can be as queer here as they ever get. An assumption then that the dark esotericist must be an unpleasant character is just as problematic as the claim that followers of the righthand path automatically occupy the moral high-ground. Ultimately, we are presented with a (nominally) resistant group which is at least no more or less sociopathic - and no more or less heterogeneous - than the goths or punks, from whom dark magicians take a certain amount of their sartorial inspiration. It may attract a tiny minority of dangerous individuals but behaviour which is seen as ‘too much’ is always resisted and controlled within the occult community. The stigmatisation of dark esotericism can be at least partially explained if the monstrous aspects of its cosmology and aesthetics are examined and read properly - we can see what Kevin Hetherington terms ‘heteroclitan identities’ which critics have tended to misunderstand. 10 Of course, as with goths and punks, there is an element of choice at work - such identities are achieved, not ascribed. Black magicians deliberately toy with the notion of being mad, bad and dangerous to know, sometimes to their own social cost.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. Conclusion In conclusion, it must be acknowledged that the analysis herein is fairly ‘old school,’ and yet I trust that the trap of reductive and simplistic structuralism has been avoided - so much of what we have seen is culturally-specific to late modernity. After a social-constructionist analysis such as this one, Western esotericism in general can be seen for what it is - a predictable product of contemporary culture. Far from being a fatuous fiction or atavistic resurgence as critics and proponents (respectively) claim, contemporary esotericism fits late modern life extremely well. The spiritual courting of the monstrous then is much less strange than it might at first appear. When proper attention is paid to its global borrowing, its modernisation and its psychologisation, contemporary esotericism dark or otherwise - turns out to be, culturally, quite logical.

Notes 1

Brian Gibbons, Spirituality and the Occult: From the Renaissance to the Modern Age (London: Routledge, 2001), 3-5. 2 Antoine Faivre, ‘Introduction I’, in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, eds. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992), xv. 3 Susan Greenwood, Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld: An Anthropology (Oxford: Berg, 2000). 4 Jenny Blain, Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism (London: Routledge, 2002). 5 Fiona Bowie, The Anthropology of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 25-27. 6 Kenneth Grant, Beyond the Mauve Zone (London: Starfire, 1999), 13. 7 Carl G. Jung, Four Archetypes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972). 8 Greenwood, Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld, 27. 9 Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1976), 23. 10 Kevin Hetherington, Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics (London: Sage, 1998), 148.

Bibliography Blain, Jenny. Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism. London: Routledge, 2002. Bowie, Fiona. The Anthropology of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Crowley, Aleister. The Book of the Law. Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1976.

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__________________________________________________________________ Faivre, Antoine, and Jacob Needleman. Modern Esoteric Spirituality. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992. Gibbons, Brian. Spirituality and the Occult: From the Renaissance to the Modern Age. London: Routledge, 2001. Grant, Kenneth. Beyond the Mauve Zone. London: Starfire, 1999. Greenwood, Susan. Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld: An Anthropology. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Hetherington, Kevin. Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics. London: Sage, 1998. Jung, Carl G. Man and His Symbols. London: Aldus Books Limited, 1964. —––. Four Archetypes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972. William Redwood completed a PhD at University College London. He is an independent scholar and teacher.

Part 3 Frankenstein Revisited: Incarnations of a Meta-Monster

Destroyer and Preserver: Monstrous Intertextuality in Watchmen Brittany Reid Abstract The following chapter contends that in the consideration of sole authorship, texts such as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen complicate typical notions through the extended use of intertextuality. The result of this explicit heterogeneity is a bastard form that conflates traditional literary forms with comics and frustrates hierarchical binary distinctions. The creation of Watchmen was a watershed moment for future compositional practices and the academic treatment of texts formerly considered ‘commercial art.’ Through a reliance on established tropes and generic conventions, topical cultural references and thematically poignant literary epigraphs, Watchmen is the culmination of its varied influences. In addition to their role as central contributors, Moore and Gibbons act as curators and compilers. Combing poignant classical and popular references, they engage in conversation with some of the most influential champions of progress, innovation and social action throughout history, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Bob Dylan. The resulting text is the literary equivalent to Frankenstein’s creature the progeny of creative harvesting and an attempt to achieve the ideal form through selective composition. Playing the role of Dr. Frankenstein, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons exhume bodies of work and splice radical thinkers into their own narrative to create a seminal text that proves to be as great as the sum of its illustrious parts. However, this re-appropriation requires further questioning in line with Roland Barthes’ and Michel Foucault’s studies of the author-function: How does this overt application of intertextuality influence traditional literary analysis? An evaluation of these implanted sections both individually and as they relate within Watchmen is useful to understanding the work as a cohesive whole. Also, the inclusion of authorship as it pertains to other works, especially graphic novels, offers an instructive paradigm for how we can consider these new definitions in this emerging academic field. Key Words: Authorship, intertextuality, monstrous forms, graphic novels, Watchmen, Frankenstein, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes. ***** In the burgeoning field of comic and graphic novel studies, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen is regarded as a watershed moment for the growing form. The mass success of Watchmen has transcended its medium, permitting it entry into the hallowed halls of the academy from which comic books were long denied, and allowing it to burst onto Time Magazine’s 100 Best Novels list.

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__________________________________________________________________ However, while this graphic novel may initially appear to be an eccentric addition or curio in the line-up, Moore and Gibbon’s subversive look at 1980s America through the eyes of retired superheroes makes no qualms about its literary origins. Instead, Watchmen utilises the full potential of the graphic literary medium to explicitly highlight the intertextuality that is so central to its structure and meaning. Through frequent literary and cultural allusions, key quotations from canonical writers and multiple layers of narrative, Watchmen reveals itself as the culmination of its varied sources. But while many writers wear their influences on their sleeves, the link between Watchmen and its formative antecedents is pivotal to its unique composition. Ideas and references from external sources are not covertly woven in, but are instead grafted onto the work itself and preserved as an impressive patchwork of interconnected texts, writers or ideas. In this way, the surgical scars of intertextuality are clearly evident, marking Watchmen as a monstrous graphic literary progeny and a distinct case in the modern literary canon. Nevertheless, this re-appropriation requires further questioning in line with Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault’s studies of the author-function: How does this overt application of extended intertextuality influence traditional literary analysis? Do the same practices apply, or is a reconsideration of these works, as well as their source texts, necessitated? How does this textual heterogeneity align with the conception of graphic novels as a bastard art form that conflates traditional literature with comics and frustrates hierarchical distinctions? By discussing issues of authorship and intertextuality through the lens of Watchmen as a graphic novel, I hope to demonstrate how these concepts can be usefully applied to our critical consideration of this emerging academic field. In any conversation surrounding notions of authorship, Roland Barthes’ groundbreaking essay ‘Death of the Author’ must be included. Barthes argued that for society to reach a stage more in keeping with a progressive humanist view point, the author’s role as the authority on a text must eventually be eclipsed by the plurality of meanings generated through varied reader response. 1 In keeping with this view, Barthes considered sole authorship impossible due to the many latent influences which underpin narrative and formal construction. As he wrote, ‘text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue.’ 2 Barthes was among a growing number of critics and theorists who were coming to acknowledge the very tangible influence that artists have on one another’s work within the symposium of creative collaboration, even when not intentionally pursued. This move away from viewing authors as closed systems opens the door to a broader relational consideration of writers across time, space, field or discipline. Rather than a novel approach, the persistence of intertextuality was acknowledged by Barthes and other like-minded theorists as a necessary concession in the appraisal of a literary work. But how does Barthean intertextuality and doubt in the author as the sole creator of a text affect our reading of Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen? If

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__________________________________________________________________ intertextuality and collective creation are seen as necessary concessions in contemporary critical theory and recurrent throughout literature, what makes Watchmen a significant case and how may we perceive it differently through the lens of the graphic literary medium? Exploring the dark underbelly of 1980s America in a world where superheroes have been forced into retirement and crime runs rampant amidst the growing anxieties of Cold War brinkmanship, themes of the monstrous, the abject and the outcast are prevalent throughout Watchmen. However, Moore and Gibbons’ sensitive approach to issues of morality and motive nuance the reductive essentialism that once pervaded the genre, and much of the narrative complexity is derived from the masterful use of intertextuality. Originally released as a twelve issue series from 1986-87, to the unacquainted observer Watchmen is in every way the prototypical superhero comic; the serialised telling, the nine panel grid and the same iconography all allude to the paradigm we have become accustomed to. However, upon closer consideration, the adherence of Watchmen to comic conventions is revealed as an act of subversion, and the familiar tropes are addressed only so that they may be exploded. While this shift is enacted through the themes and events of the graphic novel, the most significant turn is realised through the text’s formal composition. A far cry from the single perspective and linear narrative formerly employed by traditional comic books, Watchmen makes use of intertextuality through the liberal use of quotations from famed writers. However, before exploring the effects of this radical, non-linear structure it is necessary to address how this intertextuality may be considered ‘monstrous,’ and how this relates to a discussion of sole authorship. Without attempting to ascribe a moral binary to the process, monstrous intertextuality specifically refers to the structure and composition of Watchmen as an apparent literary abomination. In addition to their role as central contributors, Moore and Gibbons act as curators and compilers in this monstrous culmination. Combing poignant classical and popular references, they engage with some of the most influential champions of progress, innovation and social action throughout history, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Percy Bysshe Shelley or Bob Dylan. As the Adam of their labours, the resulting text is the literary equivalent to Frankenstein’s creature - the progeny of creative harvesting and an attempt to achieve the ideal form through selective composition. Playing the role of Dr. Frankenstein, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons exhume bodies of work and splice radical thinkers into their own narrative to create a seminal text that proves to be as great as the sum of its illustrious parts. While literary allusions or epigraphs are by no means exclusive to Watchmen alone, it is the centrality of these external references to the narrative structure as well as the implications of applying this practice to the graphic literary medium that make it such an important departure for its time. The sophisticated structure of Watchmen aligns the main narrative of costumed

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__________________________________________________________________ crime fighters solving a murder mystery with layers of subtext and hypertext that comment, critique and elucidate our reading. The result is a concert of distinct voices which informs reader interpretation. As Alan Moore asserted: With Watchmen, what we tried to do was give it a truly kind of crystalline structure, where it’s like this kind of jewel with hundreds and hundreds of facets and almost each of the facets is commenting on all of the other facets and you can kind of look at the jewel through any of the facets and still get a coherent reading. 3 Let us then look more closely at the structure of Watchmen to decipher how Moore and Gibbons produce this plurality of nuanced meanings. A lone panel featuring the character Dr. Manhattan closes out Chapter 3 which is entitled ‘The Judge of All the Earth.’ 4 Taking refuge on Mars after he is deemed a hazard to society, the omniscient superhuman sits alone in contemplative repose. Dwarfed by the vastness of sky and stars around him, we are afforded a look at Dr. Manhattan’s face and the uncharacteristic expression of sadness at his growing isolation. Moore’s story, Gibbons’ illustrations and the intercession of intertextuality work here in perfect concerto as the caption underneath this panel reads ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ 5 Taken from the book of Genesis, this quotation complements the scene and provides the ideal summation of the preceding issue. The structure of each chapter follows this pattern of promise and fulfilment with a title taken directly from quotations by important writers, thinkers or figures throughout history. As each section proceeds, the thematic or narrative significance of the chosen title is gradually revealed through implicit and explicit means. Nowhere is this technique more clearly observed than in the visually stunning Chapter 5: ‘Fearful Symmetry,’ a line taken from William Blake’s poem ‘The Tyger.’ 6 In a marvellous synthesis of visual and textual meaning, the entire section mirrors its own graphic composition with the beginning and end panels acting as near replicas of one another. 7 Moore and Gibbons here utilise the full potential of the graphic literary medium to emphasise and explore a proposed literary aim with the use of graphic techniques. Visual cues and plot points create a constant interplay of meaning as Moore and Gibbons benefit from the relational potential and ongoing dialogue generated between text and image, a unique strength of the graphic literary medium. At the end of each chapter, the full quotation and its speaker are revealed, bookending each of the issues during their original serial release. The revelation of the full quotation couches the preceding chapter and gears each segment towards an explicitly stated thematic end, thus elucidating meaning and underscoring the central narrative. The title of Chapter 4: ‘The Watchmaker,’ initially appears to be a fitting title for Dr. Manhattan’s origin story as it relates back to his father’s profession and speaks to his ability to exist outside

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__________________________________________________________________ of linear time. However, when the chapter concludes with the words of Albert Einstein, 8 the full scope of this quotation is revealed with a degree of foreshadowing regarding key plot points and a parenthetical nod to the graphic novel’s title: The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking […] the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. 9 By hinting at Einstein’s words in the title and only revealing the full line at the section’s conclusion, Moore and Gibbons nest each chapter within its famous quotation, emphasising the crucial narrative, structural and thematic importance of each. It is worthwhile to further consider why Moore and Gibbons would entrust these outside individuals to have a formative influence on their graphic literary work, and how the effect is produced. The quotations used in Watchmen are largely from famed authors, artists and cultural icons, not from obscure or lesser known figures. What bearing does this decision have on our own appraisal of the work, both as critics and readers? The position each external source holds in the cultural consciousness is used to elevate Watchmen to a level of narrative and thematic sophistication not previously thought possible for the graphic novel. In his essay ‘What Is an Author?’ Michel Foucault discusses how an author’s name acts as a stand-in for the entirety of his or her collected works. In explicitly referencing an author in another text, there is a direct association made with everything he/she has come to represent, making the act of naming a loaded move in formal or creative discourse. 10 As Foucault states: The author’s name serves to characterize a certain mode of being of discourse: the fact that the discourse has an author’s name [...] shows that this discourse is not ordinary everyday speech that merely comes and goes, not something that is immediately consumable. On the contrary, it is a speech that must be received in a certain mode and that, in a given culture, must receive a certain status. 11 By presenting these outside quotations alongside the names of their respective speakers, Moore and Gibbons make the conscious decision to preserve a natal link to the source of each epigraph. The original writers are not divorced from their own words and the gravity of the quotations is therefore maintained with the original context left intact. In choosing to include the iconic names associated with these key phrases, Moore consciously differentiates between his own authorial

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__________________________________________________________________ voice and these instances of explicit intertextuality as this plurality of voices both relies on and subsumes author identity, just as Foucault suggests. Consequently, these important quotations are further emphasised through the distancing effect produced by calling forth their impressive speakers, thus preventing them from being ‘immediately consumable,’ as Foucault aptly observes. 12 Ostensibly, through the implantation of a credited quotation by Nietzsche, for example, the entirety of his collected works, along with his cultural identity, dismembers the illusion of sole authorship, and operates as a working appendage in the anatomy of Watchmen. This self-reflexivity causes the reader to acknowledge the stitches and the surgical scars left by Moore and Gibbons’ monstrous intertextuality. These excerpts from famed texts are ostensibly sutured onto the central plotline of Watchmen and become a part of the graphic novel without being seamlessly integrated. This necessary distinction between narrative voices is further emphasised through graphic conventions which allow for a visual delineation to mirror this textual disparity. While it is important to look at how this intertextuality is performed, it is equally vital to examine who Moore and Gibbons specifically chose to include in this narrative. Although Carl Jung and Albert Einstein may not initially seem like easy bedfellows with the graphic literary form, their inclusion marks a conscious effort to lend their cultural and academic prominence to Watchmen and reflects Moore’s attitude towards the medium’s importance. Illustrator Dave Gibbons supports this assessment of Moore’s aim in his statement: ‘Alan saw comics on the same continuum as novels and movies, and would apply the same critical and creative disciplines.’ 13 Indeed, Moore and Gibbons’ concerted effort to comb through cultural, scholarly or critical darlings, from William Blake to Elvis Costello, is indicative of a desire to tell a story that transcends the traditional limitations imposed on graphic novels and comics. Through his decision to scavenge through literary and academic titans for references, Moore speaks to the limitless potential of the graphic form as a medium of re-appropriation and creative extension. Watchmen essentially consumes these iconic figures by integrating them within its narrative structure, and seeks fortification and enrichment from the established legacies of these cultural heavyweights. Consequently, these quotations are not merely academic Easter eggs but, considered collectively, serve as the framework for Watchmen as a whole. These intertextual wraparounds form their own cohesive storyline when taken together, and lend a meta-narrative commentary to the story. Ultimately, their inclusion highlights a conscious effort to establish multiple layers of meaning and, just as Barthes suggests, present a textual polysemy not previously afforded by the perceived limitations of sole authorship. 14 Through Watchmen, a complex approach to authorship emerges as artistic influences transcend rarified abstraction and become concretely manifested and observable. Moore and Gibbons literalise the connection between their text and its formative antecedents, essentially offering in-text citations so as to provide a more

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__________________________________________________________________ salient and expressive link between Watchmen and those already canonised writers. Moore and Gibbons gain entrance into a new league of study and critical consideration by bringing these established writers into their collected and original work. It is the uncanny perfection of teaming what was once considered low culture with high culture, the juxtaposition of fields, the cross-medium reimagining and the harmonious dissonance of voices and perspectives that marks the intertextuality in Watchmen as a master touch by Moore and Gibbons. The seeming bravado of throwing out conventional barriers to find thematic links across academic and popular discourses is what makes Watchmen a monstrous creation, but additionally, it is this graphic novel’s true crowning glory. Affronting traditional strictures on comic books, Moore and Gibbons imbued their graphic novel with a literary and cultural import not thought possible at the time. In doing so, they showed the new potential for utilising the strengths of the medium and the bastard origins of the graphic novel to their advantage. While the visual aspect had always been the draw for classic comics, Moore’s advanced narrative structure finally tapped the literary potential of the form in a way that had never been done before. Complemented by Gibbons’ sensitive eye for visual metaphor, Watchmen is a decidedly literary comic that proudly acknowledges its heterogeneity by making its intertextuality an explicit declaration. The creation of Watchmen is a watershed moment for future compositional practices and the academic treatment of texts formerly considered ‘commercial art,’ such as the graphic novel. Through their combing of literary, popular, cultural or scientific references, Moore and Gibbons dissected and implanted the most poignant and topical segments into their socially-aware graphic novel. The result is an application of intertextuality that is at once consciously overt and decidedly monstrous since the distinct origins of each limb, feature or facet are still clearly discernible, revealing an end product that is unique and hauntingly beautiful. It is this versatility that has proven to be the greatest compositional strength of Watchmen and, like Frankenstein’s creature itself, its legacy as an important work of modern literature is very much alive.

Notes 1

Roland Barthes, ‘Death of the Author’, in Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1978), 144. 2 Ibid., 147. 3 Henry John Pratt, ‘Making Comics into Film’, in The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach, eds. Aaron Meskin and Roy T. Cook (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012), 161. 4 Michael D. Coogan, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 36. 5 Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (New York: DC Comics, 1986), 28.

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William Blake, ‘The Tyger’, in The Broadview Anthology of Literature of the Revolutionary Period 1770-1832, eds. D. L. MacDonald and Anne McWhir (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2010), 296. 7 Jeff Jensen, ‘Watchmen: An Oral History’, Entertainment Weekly, October 21, 2005, 3; Michel Foucault, ‘What Is an Author?’, in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1994), 209. 8 Reiner Braun, Einstein: Peace Now!: Visions and Ideas (Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2005), 12. 9 Moore and Gibbons, Watchmen, 28. 10 Foucault, ‘What Is an Author?’, 209. 11 Ibid., 211. 12 Ibid. 13 Jensen, ‘Watchmen: An Oral History’, 2. 14 Barthes, ‘Death of the Author’, 141.

Bibliography Blake, William. ‘The Tyger’. In The Broadview Anthology of Literature of the Revolutionary Period 1770-1832, edited by D. L. MacDonald, and Anne McWhir, 296. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2010. Braun, Reiner. Einstein: Peace Now!: Visions and Ideas. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2005. Coogan, Michael D., ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Jensen, Jeff. ‘Watchmen: An Oral History’. Entertainment Weekly, 21 October 2005. Accessed March 27, 2012. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1120854,00.html. Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1986. Pratt, Henry John. ‘Making Comics into Film’. In The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach, edited by Aaron Meskin, and Roy T. Cook. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012. Brittany Reid is a graduate student at the University of Calgary. Her current research is focused on Frankenstein and how its Romantic theatrical adaptations address the notion of the Doppelganger.

Monster: Anxiety of the Human: A Study of the Two Novels of Doris Lessing Sivakamasundari Arumugam Abstract This chapter explores the representations of monsters as depicted in two of Doris Lessing’s novels: The Fifth Child (1988) and its sequel Ben in the World (2000). The protagonist Ben, the fifth child of David and Harriet, is different from his siblings. He is born weighing eleven pounds and with strange features. As a deviant in the eyes of others, Ben shatters the dream of the ‘happy family’ envisioned by his parents. At the end of the first novel he leaves his home in search of people of his own type; in the second novel - having failed to find them - the protagonist commits suicide out of disappointment. I believe that the aim behind any work of art is to critique, reform or at least describe the prevailing condition of its society. Accordingly, this chapter explores the monsterisation of the human body, anxieties within family life, medical and legal institutions as well as institutionalised discourses of the monster and the monstrous as reflected in the two chosen literary works. I will also observe the ways in which the specific social and cultural locale of these novels, both in terms of production and the plot, engage with the monster and the monstrous. Key Words: Monster, monstrous experience, anxiety, narratives, monsterisation of the human body. ***** This study focuses on the representations of monster and the monstrous in two novels by Doris Lessing - The Fifth Child (1988) and Ben in the World (2000). The first book revolves around the birth of the ‘abnormal’ protagonist Ben who shatters his parents’ dream of a perfect family. The other tells the story of Ben after he has left his home, which results in his suicidal death. These two novels focus on the notion of disability and its relation to monstrosity, institutions and the role of science. Therefore, I examine them through the theoretical framework of disability. 1 Lessing’s novels have been studied and extensively analysed in regard to themes such as socialism, realism, feminism, post-colonialism, parent/child relationships, motherhood, pregnancy and Gothic tropes. Michael Thorpe in his review of The Fifth Child writes: Doris Lessing’s breathless novella [sic] The Fifth Child is best taken as a moral fable, akin to The Good Terrorist [...] and

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__________________________________________________________________ Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) in its stress upon the fragility of a materialistic, self-centered culture and society. 2 Similarly, Roberta Rubenstein, in her review of The Fifth Child entitled ‘Enfant Terrible,’ explains that: Throughout her fiction, Lessing’s characters discover the ways in which their assumed freedom is bracketed by forces, whether inside the self or outside the self, that are beyond their control. 3 Another prominent feature of Lessing’s novels is the similarity with novels within the Gothic tradition. The Fifth Child has been studied with a focus on the Gothic theme. 4 Scholars have already compared these books with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in terms of their depiction of the Gothic trope. In his review of Lessing’s novels, entitled ‘Not Responsible for Item Forgotten or Lost,’ Alan Davis discusses the character of Ben in The Fifth Child: ‘His primordial nature thus drives him; his literary bloodline could be traced back to Frankenstein except that he is no experiment.’ 5 Moreover, in one of her interviews with Sussi Linfield, Lessing herself compares The Fifth Child with Shelley’s Frankenstein: With Ben, the nearest analogy is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’m not comparing it in any other way, but it’s the same kind of book: that is, you have a totally impossible premise, and then you write with the extreme realism as if it were true. And of course Frankenstein as you know came out of Gothic tradition. What Mary Shelly did was take all that nonsense about haunted castle and give it this powerful realism. So I could say, if I were pushing it, that I am somewhere a long way down the line from the gothic tradition. 6 Although Frankenstein (1818) and The Fifth Child (1988) originate from two different epochs, one can see some parallels between them. In spite of the different origins of the protagonists, in both novels the process of creation begins with a desire - either to satisfy scientific ambitions (Dr. Frankenstein) or to fulfil a dream of a happy family (Ben’s parents). When they see the appearance of their creations, the creators feel guilt and hatred, and decide to get rid of the creatures they produced. However, not everyone feels this way. The ‘monster’ in Frankenstein is not monstrous at all to the blind old man De Lacey, just as Ben does not appear monstrous to Mrs. Ellen Briggs, who in the beginning of Ben in the World takes care of the boy while he is away from home. Despite these individual instances, both protagonists are predominantly treated as monsters. Finally they end up hating humanity and decide to kill themselves out of depression and disappointment. I am

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__________________________________________________________________ particularly interested in one of the above mentioned aspects, that is: How do these so-called ‘monsters’ appear different to different groups? How are they set apart from ‘normal’ beings? Both Frankenstein and The Fifth Child can be studied through the perspective of disability. In the first novel the disability is identified by the protagonist’s different appearance which marks him as a ‘monster.’ As Lennard Davis discusses in ‘Visualizing the Disabled Body,’ ‘we do not think of the monster in Mary Shelley’s work as disabled, but what else is he? The characteristic of his disability is a difference in appearance.’ 7 As with Davis’ interpretation of Frankenstein in the light of contemporary research in disability studies, it is also a worthwhile endeavour to consider the impact of theories of the monster and the monstrous on Lessing’s The Fifth Child and Ben in the World. This impact is one of the topics of my current PhD research. In this chapter I will explore different issues concerning abnormality as they appear or are suggested in the two selected novels of Doris Lessing - the idea of monstrosity, Down’s syndrome, the role of institutions, science, medicine and disability in the late modern time, and other related issues like the disabled child and the role of mother, maternity, difficult pregnancy and monstrosity. Let me begin with illustrating these themes and issues in some detail as they appear in the novels. In The Fifth Child, Harriet and David, unconventionally, desire to have more children. Harriet, in an argument with her mother, says: Perhaps we ought to have been born into another country. Do you realize that having six children, in another part of the world, it would be normal, nothing shocking about it - they aren’t made to feel criminals. 8 Everything goes well until the birth of Ben who is considered by his family to be ‘abnormal.’ Even though Dr. Bret characterises him simply as ‘a hyperactive child,’ 9 at home and among his friends Ben is considered a freak, Monster, Dopy, Dwarfey, Yeti, Alien Two, Hobbit, and Gremlin - clearly not a ‘normal’ child. The family thinks Ben disturbs their peace, and even feels that Ben is a real threat to his other ‘normal’ siblings. David’s parents, the academic Fredrick Burke and his wife Molly, suggest to the couple that they should institutionalise Ben for the sake of family harmony. David agrees with them and sends the boy to an institution in the northern part of England. When Harriet visits, though, she brings her son back home due to the horrible condition of the place. She finds it horribly maintained and cruel towards its disabled patients. Through the eyes of Harriet, the reader can see all types of the institution’s patients. Lessing describes Harriet’s visit in vivid detail:

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__________________________________________________________________ She was at the end of a long ward, which had any number of cots and beds along the walls. In the cots were - monsters. While she strode rapidly through the ward to the door at the other end, she was able to see that every bed or cot held an infant or small child in whom the human template had been wrenched out of pattern, sometimes horribly, sometimes slightly. A baby like a comma, great lolling head on a stalk of a body […] then something like a stick insect, enormous bulging eyes among stiff fragilities that were limbs […] a small girl all blurred, her flesh guttering and melting […] a doll with chalky swollen limbs, its eyes wide and blank, like blue ponds, and its mouth open, showing a swollen little tongue. A lanky boy was skewed, one half of his body sliding from the other. A child seemed at first glance normal, but then Harriet saw there was no back to its head; it was all face, which seemed to scream at her. Rows of freaks, nearly all asleep, and all silent. Well, nearly silent: there was a dreary sobbing from a cot that had its sides shielded with blankets. The high intermittent screaming, nearer now, still assaulted her nerves. They were literally drugged out of their minds. A smell of excrement, stronger than the disinfectant. 10 Also, Harriet’s later reference to the institution while explaining to her husband the reason for bringing Ben back is very significant. She says: ‘They were killing him.’ 11 Still, she also repeatedly brings up the institution as a tool to threaten her son whenever she feels he gets out of control: ‘Now listen to me, Ben. If you ever, ever, ever hurt anyone again, you’ll have to go back there.’ 12 Ben’s presence disturbs the family again so they leave him under the care of their servant John. They decide to send him to school where Ben is described as being normal, but a slow learner. When the boy turns eleven, he leaves home to go away with his elderly school friends. Ben is eighteen in the sequel Ben in the World. He is away from home permanently. In the beginning, he lives with an old lady, Mrs. Ellen Biggs. After her death, Ben goes to Rita, a prostitute. Rita’s friend Johnston does not like the boy so he sends him to France with cocaine. In France Ben attracts Alex, a filmmaker from New York. Alex takes him to Brazil to make a movie with him. During his absence, Teresa Alves, Alex’s lover, takes care of the boy. In the meantime the protagonist meets Inez, a biologist, who discusses his case with her parents. As a result, a group of scientists with Inez’ father take Ben to the laboratory to examine his body. But Teresa and Alfredo, an assistant working at the science institute, save Ben from the hands of science. In the end, when the protagonist comes to accept or believe that indeed there are no people like him

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__________________________________________________________________ anywhere as Alfredo once said, he commits suicide out of depression and disappointment. We see Ben, the fifth child of Harriet and David Lovett, being labelled as ‘abnormal’ in comparison with the other ‘normal’ family members. To a specific group of people, within his family and in the outside world, in both The Fifth Child and Ben in the World, the protagonist is clearly established as a ‘monster.’ In The Fifth Child, after having discovered the ‘abnormality’ of her child during her pregnancy, Harriet tells the doctor: ‘“It’s not you who is carrying this -.” She cut off monster, afraid of astonishing him.’ 13 Ben’s parents feel guilty after the birth of their ‘abnormal’ fifth child. Also Ben’s siblings ostracise him, loathing his mere presence. Yet, outside his family he is treated as ‘normal’ by his friends, the doctors and by the headmistress and other staff at school. This raises the question of how ‘abnormality’ can be defined, when it differs greatly within the cultural context of a particular group. The family, especially the father, is interested in getting rid of the ‘monster’ at whatever cost to retain the ‘happy family.’ David welcomes his parents’ idea of sending Ben to an institution. At this point Harriet hesitates. So he says to his parents and Harriet: “Look I agree. And some time Harriet is going to have to agree. And as far as I am concerned, that time is now. I don’t think I can stick it any longer.” And now he did look at his wife, and it was a pleading, suffering look. Please, he was saying to Harriet, please. 14 Apart from the ‘monster’ Ben, The Fifth Child features another minor character, Amy, who has Down’s syndrome. At the beginning of the novel, Amy’s mother covers the child’s face whereas in the later part we hear the girl being described as everyone’s favourite. Why is it so? What I am particularly interested in is to see the social and historical significance behind Lessing’s use of a character with Down’s syndrome and the meanings of it in a British context. Has the author’s portrayal of the girl had anything to do with the influence of special education in the late 1980s in Great Britain? One can easily notice the difference in the treatment of Ben ‘the monster’ and Amy, the child with Down’s syndrome, when both fall under the same paradigm of ‘disability.’ Lessing’s identification of representations of disability - in this particular case Down’s syndrome - with the depiction of the monstrous in the Gothic tradition raises questions of whether we can label her a social reformer. The condition of institutions in Britain in the late 1980s is also one of the themes related to disability studies in Lessing’s novels. How does she present it? How does she make a critique of the situation? Are the educational, scientific and technological developments a boon or a bane in the lives of the ‘abnormal’ people? These questions and doubts appeared when I was reading the novel.

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__________________________________________________________________ Lessing in both the novels states the contemporary condition of non-normative society. What is particularly interesting is the reasons why the writer places monstrosity as the focus of her works. One can wonder whether the author acts as a social reformer or sides with the normative society. If she poses as a social reformer, why did she choose death for Ben as a solution for all the problems? And why does Ben appear to his family as a monster? It is often assumed that mothers, as the primary care givers, will be supportive of their ‘disabled’ or ‘abnormal’ offspring. Why does he miss support from his mother? What is the reason for Lessing to bring this topic into the novel? Lessing’s depiction of the understanding of disability as monstrous through the character of Ben is illuminating when considering the social, political and cultural context of both monstrosity and disability represented by these novels. My study will also explore these and other similar descriptions of monstrosity and their underlying implications in the narrative by looking into the various themes that they engage with. I am also going to question the role of science - which is predominantly understood by the disabled community as advancing with the strong faith that it improves the standard of our life - through the perspective of disability and monstrosity. As Davis notes in Enforcing Normalcy quoting C. P. Blacker: ‘“Hasn’t the time come to cry out that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk?” The imperative is clear: science will eradicate disability.’ 15 In the novels The Fifth Child and Ben in the World the fear of science in relation to the question of disability is clearly visible. The following lines from The Fifth Child reflect the mother’s thoughts on that topic: Admitted curiosity [...] what then? Could Ben, even now, end up sacrificed to science? What would they do with him? Carve him up? Examine those cudgel-like bones of his, those eyes, and find out why his speech was so thick and awkward? 16 This gruesome possibility becomes true in the sequel Ben in the World. In the later part of the novel a group of scientists show interest in studying Ben in the laboratory. He is an object of curiosity for the scientists, no longer a human being. The interest of science in supporting the ‘norm-based’ society and its changing nature is what brings about a fear of it. At the beginning of scientific advancements, science was considered as a hope for humanity because it had always been defined as striving for improving the standard of human living. At a time when the fame of science is at its peak, particularly because of the cures it brought to make the ‘unfit’ body ‘fit,’ science is viewed as a blessing to human society. When the same science, though, begins to promote the notions of social and bodily ‘normalcy’ through assistance or investigation of the ‘unfit,’ it becomes a normative tool which generates a fear of ‘abnormal’ people.

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__________________________________________________________________ Through an analysis of the way in which the institution of science has been portrayed in Lessing’s novels, I ask the following questions: How has science changed or ‘evolved’? How is science related to the life of ‘abnormal’ people? Is it a boon or a bane? Does it save lives or take them? How do scientists violate certain rules to reach their goal? If their achievements are brought about through the sacrifice of innocent lives, is it really a success? Through the study of these novels, my future research aims to explore the possible answers to all these questions. Continuing in the tradition of the novel as a form of social commentary, Doris Lessing’s exploration of monstrous depiction of disability through the character of Ben guides the reader towards an awareness of such issues as familial relationships, motherhood, institutions and the role of science. This chapter has outlined this research focus, with reference to the novels and the theoretical frameworks that would enhance this research. While definitive conclusions cannot be drawn without further research, it has shown that Lessing’s novels pose questions which bear investigation.

Notes 1

See Tom Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs (New York: Routledge, 2006) or Lennard Davis, Disability Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 2010). 2 Michael Thorpe, Review of The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing, World Literature Today 62, No. 4 (Autumn 1988): 657. 3 Roberta Rubinstein, ‘Enfant Terrible’, review of The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing, The Women’s Review Of Books 5, Nos. 10/11 (July 1988): 22. 4 See e.g. Deepthi Sebastian, ‘Bloody Fiction: The Horror-Effect in Angela Carter, Doris Lessing and Ellen Galford’ (M.Phil. thesis, University of Hyderabad, 2008). 5 Alan Davis, ‘Not Responsible for Items Forgotten or Lost’, review of The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing, The Hudson Review 54, No. 1 (Spring 2001): 141-147. 6 Susi Linfield, ‘Against Utopia: An Interview with Doris Lessing’, Salmagundi 130.131 (2001): 62. 7 Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (London: Verso, 1995), 143. 8 Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1988), 16. 9 Ibid., 73. 10 Ibid., 47. 11 Ibid., 63. 12 Ibid., 86. 13 Ibid., 81. 14 Ibid., 132. 15 Davis, Enforcing Normalcy, 40; C. P Blacker, Eugenics: Galton and after Cambridge (MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).

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Ibid., 101.

Bibliography Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Davis, Alan. ‘Not Responsible for Items Forgotten or Lost’. Review of The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing. The Hudson Review 54, No. 1 (Spring 2001): 141–147. Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso, 1995. Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism and Theory: From Plato to the Present. Malden: Blackwell, 2005. Kumar, Alka. Doris Lessing: Journey in Evolution. New Delhi: Books Plus, 2001. Lessing, Doris. The Fifth Child. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1988. —––. Ben in the World. London: Flamingo [HarperCollins], 2000. Linfield, Susi. ‘Against Utopia: An Interview with Doris Lessing’. Salmagundi 130.131 (2001): 62. Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2000. Osteen, Mark, ed. Autism and Representation. New York: Routledge, 2008. Rubinstein, Roberta. ‘Enfant Terrible’. Review of The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing. The Women’s Review of Books 5, Nos. 10/11 (July 1988): 22. Sebastian, Deepthi, ‘Bloody Fiction: The Horror-Effect in Angela Carter, Doris Lessing and Ellen Galford’. M.Phil. thesis, University of Hyderabad, 2008. Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge, 2006. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 1818.

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__________________________________________________________________ Shildrick, Margrit. Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self. London: Sage Publication Ltd., 2002. Snyder, Sharon L., Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, eds. Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2002. Stiker, Henri-Jacques. A History of Disability. Translated by William Sayers. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1999. Thorpe, Michael. Review of The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing. World Literature Today 62, No. 4 (Autumn 1988): 657. Sivakamasundari Arumugam is a PhD student at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. She is a Rajiv Gandhi Fellowship holder and was resident in TU Dresden, Germany, under the student exchange programme between April and September 2012.

Postmodern Potencies: Interrogating the Monstrous Sign in Contemporary Society Janhavi Mittal Abstract Looking through the lens of one of monster narratives’ most captivating examples, that of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as well as its late twentieth century adaptations in an X Files episode titled ‘The Postmodern Prometheus’ and Shelley Jackson’s literary hypertext Patchwork Girl, this chapter argues that the fragmented and de-naturalised postmodernist reality has allowed for a shift in embodied monstrosity to the liminal figure of the cyborg. Furthermore, these two intrinsically postmodern meta-fictional adaptations of Frankenstein that resist the possibility of an overruling narrative perform the analogous function of the monstrous sign itself - that of re-evaluating the constructed-ness of established narratives, both of literature and of the body in society. This chapter thus addresses the potential of the postmodern and post-human metaphor to constantly disrupt conceptual systems steeped in ideas of centre, hierarchy and uniformity, instead reinvigorating them with plurality and non-normative differences between subjects without dismissing their corporeality. My analysis then appropriates these inferences from the purview of disability studies, engaging with issues pertaining to ways of representing bodily difference. Finally, after tracing a parallel social trajectory of the semantic shifts in the monster sign giving way to the cyborg, posthuman metaphor, I examine the latter’s ability of de-naturalising the body with respect to challenging impairment as a pre-discursive category and the social production of disability. Key Words: Representation, monstrous body, cyborg, metaphor, spectacle, nonnormative differences, postmodernism, post-human, disability studies, impairment. ***** The question of where science meets the humanities gains particular relevance in a technology driven society, with the answer best posited in the body. It can be understood as an interactive interface of culture that simultaneously creates meaning and can be the site for construction of meanings, addressing issues of identity formation, subjectivities of the self and the semiotic codes within which corporeal presence is imbricated. The changing position of the body and its various monster narratives provides an interesting point into the discussion. Examining the question of representing the non-normative body as embodied monstrosity through one of literature’s most captivating monster narratives, that of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, as well as its postmodern afterlives in an X Files episode titled ‘The Postmodern Prometheus’ and Shelley Jackson’s hypertext novel Patchwork Girl

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_________________________________________________________________ (1995), I argue that there has been a hollowing out of the monstrous sign and its replacement by the cyborg metaphor. In this chapter I intend to examine the sociopolitical implications of this shift in representation. A predominant aspect of the monstrous sign has been its use as a metaphor for delineating hierarchised differences. Thus, the representation of monstrosity is a process without a static object, one that constantly changes along with the shifting meanings of ‘norm.’ The fluctuating normative construct that this chapter examines through the trajectory of the monstrous sign is that of the ‘ordinary,’ ‘abled’ Western body, and how deviation from this construct has been interpreted and depicted, as well as what the postmodern potentialities of these representations mean in contemporary society. This necessitates an underscoring of the dual nature of representation itself. As Nicholas Mirzoeff argues, The body in art must be distinguished from the flesh and blood it seeks to imitate. In representation, the body appears not as itself, but as a sign. It cannot but both represent itself and a range of metaphorical meanings, not fully within the artist’s control. 1 The figure of embodied monstrosity in such narratives is not only the site for signification but also a signifier. Approaching the monster metaphor from the purview of disability studies signifies not only social constructions of what constitutes the normative body, but underscores the issue of representing the nonnormative one. Indeed, the issue of representation is a significant one within the field of disability studies, in terms of societal perceptions of the somatic difference, but also regarding questions of policy making, media visibility, healthcare funding and rights that are embedded in this perceptual matrix. Literary representations of bodily difference, including monster narratives, are often contentious because of their proclivity to over-exploit the symbolic potential of anomalous bodies. The litanies of complaints disability theorists have against this centre primarily around the naturalisation of bodily difference rather than seeing it as socially created, a product of social structures that implicitly or openly regulate what the body should and can do. Furthermore, the social realist critique of representing physical impairment in literature protests against its tendency to adopt a static, individualised outlook or a medicalised perspective, susceptible to romanticisation or negative characterisation, with personhood being reduced to a mark of bodily difference. 2 These grounds for metaphoric opportunism serve to affirm the presumed normality of the reader in contrast to the stigmatised aberrancy of the impaired figure. Although this underscores the need for socially realistic depictions of disability and a greater necessity for self-articulation in the form of biographies and autobiographies, new historicist approaches to the issue do not arbitrarily dismiss even negative representations of bodily diversity as they too form an archive for examining cultural attitudes towards physical difference. Such

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_________________________________________________________________ approaches can be seen, for example, in the arguments of David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder in Narrative Prosthesis. 3 More importantly, an analysis of these negative representations is instrumental in realising how disablement is socially and culturally produced. Much like monstrosity, disability is also, as Rosemarie Garland Thompson notes, a culturally imposed category, extrapolated from biological differences. Although the text and the world are not identical, belonging to two different semiotic systems, their relation is extremely symbiotic and precariously balanced. For representation is not only the template for recording cultural categories, but also a way of organising, ordering and perceiving one’s world. The risk, as recognised by Thompson, is that people construct interpretative schemata that make their world more knowable and predictable, thus producing ‘perceptual categories that may border into stereotypes when commonly shared and culturally imbued.’ 4 In contrast to this constructed simplicity, monster narratives, though not delving into great detail about individual social experiences of disablement, are not always an oversimplified depiction of otherness or a spectacle of corporeal difference. Thus, they not only provide a schema of the social ethos of the time depicted in terms of embodiment, identity and subjectivity formation, but also undertake an interrogation of the monstrous sign, which reveals the very constructed-ness of what constitutes the norm, subsequently resisting its mindless perpetuation. The construction of monstrosity in Mary Shelley’s 1818 version of Frankenstein 5 provides a critical insight into the nineteenth century ideas of the body. The representation of monstrosity in the text is shown to be universal, terrifying and deviant to all those who can actually see the creature, even as the narrative tends to destabilise this very notion. Victor Frankenstein immediately labels his creation as monstrous, despite having knowingly sutured him from dead and decaying human parts. Society’s collective reaction towards the creature, as seen in the repeated rejections he suffers, is predominantly that of horror and revulsion. The label of monstrosity is temporarily suspended only when the creature’s bodily form cannot be seen. This happens at two instances in the text first in the case of the blind Mr. De Lacey’s gentle kindness toward the creature, then by Robert Walton who momentarily gives him a fair audience, but only after closing his eyes. More importantly, the label of monstrosity is first internalised by the creature himself on viewing his physical form in a reflection. This corporeality of the monstrous sign highlights how pivotal the body is to the understanding of identity. Although the text subtly works at interrogating this arbitrary attribution of monstrosity, the overall consensus by those who encounter the creature as monstrous merely on the premise of bodily difference is an indictment of the homogenising societal ethos. In fact, it carries forward from the latter part of the eighteenth century where a new form of knowledge was, as Michel Foucault observes, ‘organised around the norm in terms of what was normal or not, correct or not, in terms of what one must do or not do.’ 6 However, it is significant to note

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_________________________________________________________________ that through the fractured form of Shelley’s narrative, sutured together much like Victor Frankenstein’s creation himself, the creature is enabled to be much more than a visual spectacle, and instead have an equitable share in the narrative, where he expresses his well-developed thoughts most eloquently. Shelley’s text is also seminal as a monster narrative because it archives the different connotations that the monstrous sign can assume. The etymology of the term ‘monstrous’ can be traced back to the term ‘monstrare’ which meant to show by signifying something. In the homogenising nineteenth century society, where aesthetic beauty also presupposes connotations of morality, the monstrous sign retains its medieval sense of, as Chris Baldick notes, ‘revealing visibly the results of vice, folly and unreason as a warning to humanity.’ 7 Another connotation of the monstrous that Shelley’s text brings into play is that of the monster being a recognisable deviation from the human form. Not only is the creature made from dead human parts; he is also identifiable as such by the interiority of his thoughts and the rationale of his actions. Functioning within a normative paradigm, the body of Victor Frankenstein’s creation presents a frightening possibility to the viewer as a perverted version of oneself, a threat to the boundaries of its own identity and the integrity of its received images of a cohesive self. Within this homogenising nineteenth century paradigm, the emphasis on the normalcy of the human form was absolute, and the slightest variation from it would be treated as a sign of aberrancy and considered a symbolic representation in the form of freakishness. The immense popularity of freak shows enjoyed since the mid-eighteenth century showcases the collective cultural response to somatic difference and the two conflicting effects they had on the viewers - as a challenge to the self’s stability or a reassurance of one’s own normalcy. However, with the gradual petering out of their popularity, within a century of their commencement, the metaphor of monstrosity undergoes a paradigm shift. With the emphasis on taxonomy and classification, closely related to the increasing currency given to the post-Enlightenment empirical gaze, not only was bodily difference deeply abnormalised but also medicalised, losing its power to shock, awe or entertain as spectacle. Even as the monstrous metaphor undergoes various stages of semantic change, from a site of exciting wonder, fear or fascination to pathologising physical variance, it remains predicated upon hierarchising difference. However, within the framework of contemporary postmodern society, the fragmentation of this cohesive self and the idea of the body no longer being a unified entity complicates the monstrous sign. By examining the recent re-workings of the Frankenstein myth within the larger premise that postmodern culture prides itself on - the celebration of difference, I argue that the monstrous metaphor was gradually being replaced with that of the post-human. The hollowing out of the monstrous sign, the shift away from representations of embodied monstrosities to the post-human,

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_________________________________________________________________ postmodern body is concomitant with the realisation of multiple subjectivities and the increasing awareness of the impossibility of a unified human subject. Having argued that while the monstrous body becomes redundant in postmodern culture, the post-human body retains in its stead the climacteric function of constantly disrupting conceptual systems steeped in ideas of centre, hierarchy and uniformity, and reinvigorates them with ones of plurality, extended networks and nonnormative differences, the importance of such implications within the field of disability studies are not far to seek. Examining the semiotics of the X-Files episode entitled ‘The Postmodern Prometheus’ - the jumbled array of intra-textual references to Mary Shelley’s 1818 text, daytime talk shows, Cher concerts, blazing tabloid headlines and comic books - firmly establish the show as a postmodern narrative. What is particularly relevant within the ambit of this chapter’s concerns is the brief discussion of monstrosity in The Jerry Springer Show within the episode, and its concluding scene with the show’s version of Victor Frankenstein’s creature, the Great Mutato, enjoying himself at a Cher concert. His clearly discernible resemblance to Joseph Merrick, cruelly dubbed the Elephant Man, is reminiscent of the nineteenth century’s propensity to make a spectacle out of the anomalous body. Unlike the sentimentalising and simultaneous medicalising of the body as presented in David Lynch’s film The Elephant Man (1980), the Great Mutato is integrated into society, with the townsfolk realising ‘he is no monster.’ 8 As seen in his nonchalant enjoyment of the concert, he is neither ostracised nor disabled. Moreover, in the closing glimpses of The Jerry Springer Show, which could in many respects be considered a postmodern rendition of a penny freak show, one of the guests clearly rejects the label of monstrosity applied to a child produced from an alliance with the Great Mutato, with the angry rebuke of ‘what’s not to love.’ 9 It is this resounding response that signals the faltering metaphor of monstrosity - a change from an investment in the aesthetics of the normative body to a gradual acceptance of bodily difference without the associated tags of monstrosity. The last example this chapter looks at is Shelley Jackson’s hypertext novel Patchwork Girl. 10 Jackson resurrects the aborted female monster to interrogate the monstrous sign from a postmodernist, feminist position. The digital landscape of the hypertext system is particularly apt for this purpose. Since the position of the body in the narrative provides meaning to it, a cohesive representation of it is prevented by the endless reading routes given by the hypertext. This is best exemplified in the metaphor made literal by the patchwork figure. The hypertext medium is analogous to the monstrous body in its function of re-evaluating established narratives, be it of literature or society. As Hayden White notes, To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself; far from being one code among many

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_________________________________________________________________ that a culture may utilize for endowing experience with meaning, narrative is a metacode, a human universal on the basis of which trans-cultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted. 11 As monstrosity itself is contingent on the beholder, in the case of hypertext the reader/beholder occupies a very slippery position. In the hyper-real world of shifting subjectivities, the supposed external/internal distinction between the reader and writer is dissolved. She/he, in the case of Jackson’s text, not only interprets the various meanings of the body but also constructs them. The female ‘monster’ cajoles the reader into giving meaning to the body. For example, one lexia reads: ‘I am buried here, you can resurrect me but only piecemeal, if you want to see the whole you will have to sew me together yourself.’ 12 Jackson, in an accompanying essay to the novel, further engages with the question of embodiment in hypertext. She contends that: Hierarchies break down into chains of likenesses; the self may have no clear boundaries, but do we want to lose track of it altogether? I don’t want to lose the self, only to strip it of its claim to naturalness, its compulsion to protect its boundaries, its obsession with wholeness and its fear of infection. I would like to invent a new kind of self which doesn’t fetishize so much, grounding itself in the dearly-loved signs and stuff of personhood, but has poise and a sense of humour, changes directions easily, sheds parts and assimilates new ones. 13 Essentially, Jackson’s text denaturalises the given-ness of the postmodern body, emphasising its constructed-ness to explore its very patchwork nature. The threat of the monster had been to the identity of the beholder and the integrity of his/her perceived images of a cohesive self. However, the representation of increased acceptance of what had usually been a figure of otherness/inferiority based on bodily difference indicates a decreased anxiety regarding the cohesiveness of the self, no longer grounded in a homeostatic conception of the body. Thus, the failure of the metaphor of monstrosity can be found grounded in what Paul Ricoeur, in his multidisciplinary study of metaphor, deems as the ‘strategy of the metaphor’ to novelise reality, through its re-description. 14 With the renegotiating of the human’s relation with technology, and the semiotic and material nature of the body, the very experience of embodiment changes as a plethora of inter-corporeal potentialities is opened up. Retaining the power of the monstrous sign to explore the permeability between culture and science, the metaphor of the post-human/cyborg signals what Halberstam and Livingstone call the ‘dependence or interdependence of bodies on the material and discursive

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_________________________________________________________________ networks through which they operate.’ 15 With the exploration of the possibilities of new linkages, what is understood is a burgeoning emphasis on the performative aspect of the body over its perception as a static biological absolute. It is within this contemporary framework that questions of bodily difference, categorisation of impairment and its subsequent demolition in a postmodern arena of disability studies can be addressed. Although the experience of disability is communally produced within the dominant model of social disability, impairment is treated as a pre-discursive construct. This, however, is not too different from the treatment of physical deviance in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when impairment was a determining factor in identity formation, the site for personhood to be converted into an abnormalised spectacle or a medical text to be analysed, pathologised and normalised. Applying Foucault’s concept of bio-power, disability theorist Shelley Tremain de-naturalises impairment to reveal it as a heterogeneous social construct, rendered undifferentiated within a homogenised rubric. She astutely observes that: As effects of the discourse of bio-power, impairments are materialized as universal attributes of subjects through the iteration and reiteration of rather culturally specific human norms and ideals about human functions and capabilities. 16 Without compromising on its material reality, a greater emphasis on the performativity of the body and a recognition of impairment as a constructed ‘always already’ 17 social category allows for the creation of a flexible matrix within which the multiplicity of experiences of embodiment can be examined in political and social contexts. In conclusion, I would like to underscore the transgressive potential of the post-human cyborg metaphor that it shares with the liminal figure of the monster, albeit with the crucial difference of embracing hybridity to challenge social conformity; the cyborg thus has, as Donna Haraway notes in Simian, Cyborgs and Species, the ability to use ‘prosthesis as semiosis, a source of making meanings and bodies not for transcendence but for charged communication.’ 18

Notes 1

Nicholas Mirzoeff, Bodyscape: Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure (New York: Routledge, 1995), 2. 2 See e. g. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder’s grounding of debates surrounding literary representations of disability: Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 2-34. 3 Ibid.

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Rosemarie Garland Thompson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 5-15. 5 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, ed. Maya Joshi (New Delhi: Worldview Publications, 2010). 6 Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures in College de France 1974-75, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2003), 59. 7 Chris Baldick, In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity and Nineteenth Century Writing (London: Clarendon Press, 1990), 116. 8 ‘The Postmodern Prometheus’, The X Files, season 5 episode 5, directed and written by Chris Carter, aired November 30, 1997 (USA and Canada: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1998), DVD. 9 Ibid. 10 Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl (Watertown: Eastgate Systems, 1995). 11 Hayden White, Narrative Discourse and Historical Representations (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987), 1-26. 12 Jackson, Patchwork Girl. 13 Shelley Jackson, ‘Stitch Bitch: The Patchwork Girl’, MIT Communications Forum, accessed August 13, 2011, http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/jackson.html. 14 Paul Ricouer, The Rule of Metaphor (London: Routledge, 2003), 271-302. 15 Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingstone, ‘Introduction’, in Posthuman Bodies, eds. Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingstone (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1885), 17. 16 Shelley Tremain, ‘On the Government of Disability: Foucault, Power and the Subject of Impairment’, in A Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard Davis (New York: Routledge, 2006), 185-195. 17 Louis Althusser, Essays on Ideology (London: Verso, 2008), 49. 18 Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 249.

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Bibliography Althusser, Louis. Essays On Ideology. London: Verso, 2008. Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenthcentury Writing. London: Clarendon Press, 1990. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulations. Translated by Shiela Glaser. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Publishers, 1972. Brooks, Peter. Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative. London: Harvard University Press, 1993. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge, 1993. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridian. London: Penguin Publishers, 1991. —––. Abnormal: Lectures in College de France 1974-75. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador, 2003. Fuery, Patrick. Visual Cultures and Critical Theory. London: Arnold Publishers, 2003. Halberstam, Judith, and Ira Livingstone, eds. Posthuman Bodies. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1995. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Hayles, Katherine. My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Jackson, Shelley. Patchwork Girl. Watertown: Eastgate Systems (Hypertext), 1995.

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_________________________________________________________________ Landow, George. Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Lyotard, Jean Francis. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Fredric Jameson. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. —––. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. California: Stanford University Press, 1991. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. Bodyscape: Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure. New York: Routledge, 1995. Mitchell, David, and Sharon Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Punday, Daniel. Narrative Bodies towards a Corporeal Narratology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor. London: Routledge, 2003. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. Edited by Maya Joshi. New Delhi: Worldview Publication, 2010. Thompson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Tremain, Shelley. ‘On the Government of Disability: Foucault, Power and the Subject of Impairment’. In A Disability Studies Reader, edited by Lennard Davis, 185–195. New York: Routledge, 2006. White, Hayden. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representations. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987.

Filmography Carter, Chris, dir. ‘The Postmodern Prometheus’. The X Files, season 5 episode 5. Written by Chris Carter. Aired November 30, 1997. USA and Canada: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1998. DVD.

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_________________________________________________________________ Janhavi Mittal is a final year graduate student at the Department of English, University of Delhi. Her current research interest veers to representations of the non-human within literary discourse and their ability to challenge an anthropocentric view of life and literature.

Part 4 The Angst of Reproduction and the Monstrous Offspring

The Roots of All Evil: William March’s The Bad Seed and the Human Propensity for Violence Jen Baker Abstract Following its publication in 1954, William March’s The Bad Seed achieved high critical acclaim, bolstered by its quick adaptation into both a Broadway play and Hollywood film. Its depiction of a young, pretty, white, middle-class girl who successfully hides her nature as a sadistic murderer engages with a social obsession for psychoanalysis, murder and genetic theory. Yet, over the decades fewer people have read or even heard of March’s novel. The term ‘bad seed,’ however, has become synonymous with anxieties surrounding violent and antisocial youth crime particularly in North American and British cultures. The fears for the future of youth, both real and imagined, though not unfounded, are intrinsically bound with other social values and are not as straightforward as individual children possessing ‘bad genes.’ This chapter intends to perform a cross-examination of March’s attempt to deconstruct the socio-historic notions of whiteness, childhood, beauty, class distinctions and femininity as intrinsically good, alongside depictions of reallife children who kill. The ‘evil child,’ a fairly modern re-incarnation of its predecessors - the ‘wild savage child,’ the ‘uncanny child’ and even its closest relative, the ‘wicked’ and ‘sinful child,’ dictates the progression and failure of each of March’s motifs in order to provide an incontestable view of his ultimate theme the human propensity for violence. I will suggest that despite March’s attempt within his text to breakdown the categorisation of certain values as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ through the use of a child killer, the struggle shall remain futile. For as long as both media and fictional representation continues to exploit ‘the child’ as emblematic of social anxieties for the future, either as an ‘angel’ or a ‘demon,’ the cycle of fear, and consequently, the hatred of the child will continue. Key Words: William March, child-gender, angel, demon, whiteness, beauty, childhood, dichotomies. ***** 1. Introduction In my larger research - which traces the origins and evolution of the evil child in fiction and culture - I have come across ancestors of many guises; monstrous births, grotesque putti, wicked children and uncanny infants. Yet with the character Rhoda Penmark, I found a collision of centuries of ideology concerning ‘the child’ (its nature, its status, defamation and idolatry) and wider philosophies of the nature of ‘evil.’ In a larger study I would discuss how, within his novel, William March framed his protagonist Rhoda against ideologies of nostalgia, whiteness, beauty,

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__________________________________________________________________ animalism and childhood. In this chapter I shall discuss Rhoda and some of these tropes, but framed specifically against the changing British justice system, British ideologies of childhood, girlhood, psychoanalysis, and against real British examples of children who have murdered in past centuries, most particularly Mary Bell. 2. Nature vs. Nurture and the Judicial System For the current adult generation of Britain the boy-murderers of James Bulger, who were both ten years old when they killed James aged two, are most likely the key reference points when discussing the idea of children who are evil incarnate. However, for the slightly older members of this generation, the first real incarnation of the ‘evil child’ would have begun with Mary Bell. Loretta Loach, in her study The Devil’s Children: A History of Childhood and Murder, states that ‘[i]n subsequent reports of child killing, she is mentioned as if the seed of such dangerous behaviour was sown back then in the 1960s.’ 1 In 1968 Mary Bell, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, strangled four-year-old Martin Brown whilst she was aged ten. Later that year, aged eleven, she strangled three-year-old Brian Howe. She was caught, tried and convicted in the same year, being sentenced to twelve years in prison on the conviction of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Mary’s case was heard in the assizes, as there were no separate courts specifically for children at this time. Indeed, various histories of crime and punishment in England indicate that ‘the child’ was not a key figure in judicial law for many centuries. Comprehensive records of juvenile crime rates are scarce until around the eighteenth century because children who committed criminal acts were not indicated as a child in the records, because they committed fewer criminal acts, or because they were grouped with ‘the insane.’ This is not to say, however, that records and references cannot be discovered, and certainly there are infamous cases long before the crimes of Mary Bell which indicate the changing attitudes towards ‘the child’ as a criminal. Nigel Walker’s history of crime and insanity in England, for instance, suggests that evidence from legal records and newspapers up until the late nineteenth century indicated that a child accused of a crime had to be tested for both their understanding of moral responsibility and the ability to differentiate between good and evil. 2 For instance, this practice determined a more lenient sentence for two boys accused of the murder of an infant in 1861. It was suggested that they did not have knowledge of evil, and therefore their acts must have been a consequence of ‘possession’ by the devil - a factor which was beyond their control. 3 Judicial history, furthermore, indicates that children and those deemed to be insane were frequently grouped together in accordance with punishments. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries evidence suggests that juries and judges were acquitting people who had committed insane yet intentional acts. Walker offers two justifications for this; the first being moral imbecility, that is not

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__________________________________________________________________ understanding that the act committed is wrong. More interestingly, though, Walker suggests that perhaps with the moral imbecile, ‘[l]ike a child, he might mean to kill without appreciating the horror and permanence of death.’ 4 In The Bad Seed, Rhoda is indicated as betraying a blasé attitude towards the cultural sorrows of death, which I also found to be strongly present in The Case of Mary Bell. Two of Bell’s psychiatrists reported that the girl had ‘said that death was so final and murder so common that “it didn’t matter anymore.”’ 5 Although I am not suggesting that Mary was correct (there are certainly arguments to support this theory of the unimportance or finality of death), what is essential to evoking a sense of horror towards the girl by a public audience, is that her attitude does not conform to Western culture’s expectations of grief and compassion. Both Mary and Rhoda also share a fascination with the physicality of death that is shocking to their listeners; suggested by the following quote from Gita Sereny’s case study of Bell: Four days after Martin had been found, Mary Bell knocked on the door of the Browns’ house […] Mary smiled and asked to see Martin. I said “No, pet, Martin is dead.” She turned round and said, “Oh, I know he’s dead. I wanted to see him in his coffin,” and she was still grinning. I was just speechless that such a young child should want to see a dead baby and I just slammed the door on her. 6 When Rhoda returns from the picnic after her victim Claude has been found, her mother Christine attempts to comfort her, expecting that the girl will have been distressed: Rhoda was not a sensitive child - certainly she was not an imaginative one - but the inevitableness of death, she felt, if knowledge came too suddenly, without a proper preparation, could make an impression on even the calmest person. 7 Yet Rhoda behaves as if the event had not taken place and only betrays any feelings when questioned - but not the feelings Christine had expected. ‘She had been present when the body was taken from the water, she had seen it laid out on the lawn […] She had found the discovery exciting.’ 8 Although Rhoda lacks ‘imagination,’ like Mary, the scientific and factual nature of death fascinates her, and she refers to Claude as though he was a specimen in a school project. This lack of feeling, so shocking to Western sensibilities, is still being researched today, with a key school of thought leaning towards genetic defects as an attributor. Horizon’s ‘Are you Good or Evil?’ episode, broadcast in September 2011, followed the findings of researchers who examined the brain patterns of ‘psychopathic killers.’ American neurologist Professor Jim Fallon was involved in

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__________________________________________________________________ key research that discovered that a set of brain scans indicating similar damage to the orbital cortex (the part that controls ‘animal instinct’ and social adjustment, aggression and impulsive behaviour) all belonged to people on trial or convicted of violent crime. His second discovery was instigated by remarks made by his mother when discussing the findings; she revealed that dating back to 1673 their family had a history that included approximately eight ancestors being murderers. Out of curiosity Fallon examined his own brain scans and those of family members. One scan was not only completely different, but showed the same abnormalities as the violent offenders previously researched; the scan turned out to be his own. He claimed that a large factor in the prevention of him becoming a violent killer was that he had experienced a supportive, fulfilling childhood, suggesting, of course, nurture over nature. For March, however, the debate seems to lean towards nature over nurture. Rhoda’s behaviour corresponded to various scientific studies prominent during March’s lifetime, particularly the pioneering work of British psychiatrist Henry Maudsley (1835-1918). Maudsley claimed that when examining a young child who may be labelled ‘insane’ one would encounter instincts and passions that ‘manifest themselves in unblushing, extreme and perverted action; the veil of control which discipline may have fashioned is rent; it […] reveals its animal nature.’ 9 Rhoda’s character also refutes the universality of John Bowlby’s attachment theory: What is believed to be essential for mental health is that an infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with his mother or a permanent mother substitute - one person who steadily “mothers” him, in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment. 10 It would seem, however, that children who are already pre-disposed to mental illnesses like Rhoda’s cannot be swayed by love and nurture, for their traits are inherent. 3. Deceptive Appearances Appearance is an essential component in the composition of the ‘evil child.’ Through textual analysis of The Bad Seed, it could be demonstrated that Rhoda’s appearance aided the deception of her community and undermined the binary pairings of beauty, femininity and whiteness with ‘good.’ During my research I have also encountered many interesting references in real life cases. If we examine descriptions of both victims and perpetrators in real child-on-child killings, it is evident that appearance is essential in maintaining and controlling the construction of childhood. For example, in Gitta Sereny’s The Case of Mary Bell, she gives an account of the real trial of the girl, and relays interviews with people related to the case. Throughout her account Sereny makes reference to the unusual prettiness of

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__________________________________________________________________ Mary, contrasted with her plain accomplice, thirteen-year-old Norma Bell. Although in part this can be linked to the author’s role as a journalist, recreating ‘the scene’ amidst the facts, stating that Mary is pretty is not merely a passing observation. When set against the claims of the prosecution that the girl ‘possessed a dominating personality, with somewhat unusual intelligence and a degree of cunning that is most terrifying,’ 11 this helps heighten the abhorrent and conflicting image of a child, and more importantly a girl, being responsible for ‘evil’ acts. Links to the ‘monstrous feminine’ can be observed here, and in relation to Rhoda have been shown to be particularly significant. In the text, for instance, Rhoda is described as having plain brown hair. However, Maxwell Anderson, who directed the Broadway Play version in the same year as the book’s publication, and film director Mervyn LeRoy exploit this constructed femininity by choosing almost white-blonde children to star in the role. The blondness of Rhoda is heightened particularly in the cinematic version, through use of the lighting and the bright, white dress of the character. For critic Chuck Jackson, the cinematic representation of Rhoda exploits the 1950s American fascination with blonde, white movie-stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Jayne Mansfield and Diana Dors, whose physical appearance were associated simultaneously with the binaries of sweetness and sex. 12 For the British public particularly, there remains within the text a lingering influence of Victorian attitudes towards ‘girlhood’ and ‘femininity.’ Deborah Gorham, in her study on The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal, outlines the function of the daughter within the ideological framework: ‘The image of the ideal middle-class daughter was that of the sheltered flower, a creature whose role in the home was to adorn it and assist in its maintenance.’ 13 This Victorian ideal was still prominent in the 1950s despite the advances in social theory, and appears to have influenced March’s view of American culture; almost to the same extent it influenced British texts. In her case study of Bell, Sereny can be seen to frequently fall into the trap of categorising the children involved within ‘angel or demon’ tropes, via the questioning of the families of the victims. Marina Warner in her 1988 work, Some Reflections on Childhood and Its Costs, warns that [t]he monster child reflects uneasiness about the beast in all of us; but it coexists with another sacred infant, who holds up a mirror to human possibility at the opposite pole: for every demon child in this world, there’s a cherub who belongs in everyone’s lost childhood. 14 Considering that throughout her account of the case there appears to be various attempts to illuminate more dimensions to Mary’s character than merely the ‘monstrous,’ it could be unintentional that Sereny polarises ‘the child.’ Yet, through her two-dimensional depictions of victims Martin Brown and Brian Howe,

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__________________________________________________________________ we find a verbal illustration of Warner’s pictures of cherubic innocents that ultimately undermine Sereny’s own attempts at exonerating Mary: He was four years and two months old, had a sturdy body, a ravenous appetite, wavy, light blond hair, a round mischievous face, a fair complexion, and blue eyes - “shiny blue” as his mother said later. He loved his one-year-old sister Linda, and his parents […] He also loved the Bennetts, the next door neighbours… 15 Within these few lines Sereny exploits a range of ideological descriptors that she is aware will raise sympathy with the reading public. For instance, stating Martin’s age not only in years but also in months is a particular trait of the actual child who has a tendency to describe their age in full. Again, in terms of appearance he is fair, blond and blue-eyed; the perfect visual representation of the ‘adorable child.’ He is ‘mischievous,’ a key word, for it suggests something of the adored little scamp, naturally a little bit naughty but never wicked or sinful. He is described as ‘loving’ his sister, a feeling that is perhaps questionable in its validity; what does it mean for a child to love? Is she suggesting the child already understood the implications of loving? And he also loved his neighbours, because, it is implied, he was a child of the community which, as Sereny knows, was a value in decline and of concern to society. Martin is on the brink of a new stage of childhood, he is described as developing a personality, whilst Brian Howe, the second child to have died, is slightly younger, like the putti from Renaissance art, as yet less human and more ethereal: Brian Howe had fine, curly, very light blond hair, a strong, small body, a pink and white complexion, and a face that, still with the contours of babyhood, had a tentative and vulnerable quality. 16 Again, the child is light and fair, babyish, and we can assume from his ‘vulnerability’ - still very trusting and reliant on others. According to structuralist theory, the laws of binary opposition dictate the organisation of human values, language, culture; therefore, Martin and Brian are placed in the category of ‘good,’ automatically placing Mary in the negative realm of ‘evil.’ Although the distortion of the ‘girl’ figure is more unexpected, boys were also subject to aesthetic scrutiny. The chronicled description of John ‘Any Bird’ Bell who, aged fourteen, murdered thirteen-year-old Richard Taylor in 1831 with the motive of stealing money, gives us an idea of the historicity of journalistic and social reactions to child killers: The culprit was of fair complexion, with the light hair so

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__________________________________________________________________ common amongst the peasantry; his forehead and upper lip projecting, and his eyes were deeply sunk in the head, altogether not an inapt prototype of the “Idle Apprentice” portrayed in Hogarth’s inimitable work. 17 Although there is a reference to the boy’s paleness as with Martin and Brian, in this instance it is a negative distinction of class, particularly the insinuations that the shaping of his head and face are malformed, signifying ideas of physical anthropology and cranial development prominent in the eighteenth century. Finally, reference is made to William Hogarth’s character Tom Idle whose downfall is described in twelve engraved plates collectively entitled Industry & Idleness and, according to Hogarth, ‘calculated for the use & Instruction of youth.’ 18 Tom murders for petty gain and is eventually betrayed by ‘his whore’ and hanged at the gallows, echoing the fate of John Bell. Although produced nearly a century before the crime, Hogarth’s warning of the outcome for such a life clearly resonated throughout the Victorian age, especially as the fears of an epidemic of juvenile delinquency began to surface in Britain. 4. Conclusion Both textual analysis and wider research pertaining to the nature/nurture debate, the changing concept of children and theories relating to ideologies of femininity and childhood came together to help March construct Rhoda. When analysed against real-life cases and descriptions of child murderers both preceding and following her, we gain a wider understanding of a much more generic reaction to the ‘evil’ child; of a cultural obsession with distancing ourselves from what is simultaneously familiar and monstrous. Whether a fictional construct or a real-life example, the child is stripped of dimension and categorised as either ‘evil’ or ‘innocent,’ even in an age where the notion of ‘evil’ is no longer clearly defined or accepted by the general public via religious discourse. Sometimes there are further divisions, with the child’s features and character being polarised, in other instances the features are an indicator of bad character - a seeming hark back to phrenological study or a punch cartoon caricature. It is true that there have been numerous attempts through children’s and young adult fiction to reassume dimension to child figures, but this is still complex and fraught with contradictions. The lingering inclination of Western culture to polarise children as ‘Other’ - for instance, in the coverage of riots and gang related culture in which ‘surprisingly, the “inherently evil” explanation still finds support in social parlance and media narratives,’ 19 or in horror films such as Insidious and The Orphan - only persists in distancing and isolating ‘the child’ and continues the cycle of fear and violence.

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Notes 1

Loretta Loach, The Devil’s Children: A History of Childhood and Murder (UK: Icon Books Ltd., 2009), 223. 2 Nigel Walker, Crime and Insanity in England (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), 40. 3 Loach, The Devil’s Children, 135. 4 Walker, Crime and Insanity, 40. 5 Gitta Sereny, The Case of Mary Bell (London: Arrow Books Ltd, 1972), 81. 6 Ibid., 41. 7 William March, The Bad Seed (New Jersey: Ecco Press, 1997), 48. 8 Ibid. 9 Loach, The Devil’s Children, 149. 10 John Bowlby, Childcare and the Growth of Love (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953), 13. 11 Sereny, The Case of Mary Bell, 194. 12 Chuck Jackson, ‘Little, Violent, White: The Bad Seed and the Matter of Children’, Journal of Popular Film & Television 28 (2000): 112. 13 Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (Virginia: Indiana University Press, 1982), 11. 14 Marina Warner, Into the Dangerous World: Some Reflections on Childhood and its Costs (London: Chatto & Windus Ltd., 1989), 46. 15 Sereny, The Case of Mary Bell, 31. 16 Ibid., 43. 17 S. Caddel, ‘A Narrative of the Facts Relative to the Murder of Richard Faulkner Taylor in the Woods between Rochester and Maidstone on Friday 4th March, 1831’, quoted in Heather Shore, Artful Dodgers: Youth and Crime in Early 19thCentury London (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), 64. 18 Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: High Art and Low 1732-1750 (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1992), 290. 19 Shani D’Cruze, Sandra Walklate and Samantha Pegg, Murder: Social and Historical Approaches to Understanding Murders and Murderers (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2006), 97.

Bibliography Bowlby, John. Childcare and the Growth of Love. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953.

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__________________________________________________________________ D’Cruze, Shani, Sandra Walklate, and Samantha Pegg. Murder: Social and Historical Approaches to Understanding Murders and Murderers. Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2006. Gorham, Deborah. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. Virginia: Indiana University Press, 1982. Jackson, Chuck. ‘Little, Violent, White: The Bad Seed and the Matter of Children’. Journal of Popular Film & Television 28 (2000): 111–118. Loach, Loretta. The Devil’s Children: A History of Childhood and Murder. London: Icon Books Ltd., 2009. March, William. The Bad Seed. New Jersey: Ecco Press, 1997. Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: High Art and Low 1732-1750. Vol. 2 of Hogarth. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1992. Sereny, Gitta. The Case of Mary Bell. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1972. Shore, Heather. Artful Dodgers: Youth and Crime in Early 19th-Century London. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999. Walker, Nigel. Crime and Insanity in England. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968. Warner, Marina, Into the Dangerous World: Some Reflections on Childhood and its Costs. London: Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1989. Jen Baker is a PhD candidate at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research interests include psychoanalytic approaches to literature and film, gender and sexuality, and all things Dark and Monstrous. Currently her research is devoted to charting the origins and evolution of the ‘evil child’ in fiction and culture.

Fish You Can’t Leave Behind: Deep Ones and Other Creatures as Symbols of Corruption in the Narratives of H. P. Lovecraft Juan Luis Pérez de Luque Abstract The past as a source of conflict is a topic that permeates H. P. Lovecraft’s narratives. This chapter analyses the reasons for which the writer places such a strong emphasis on the past, the various strategies that he uses to transport the past to the present in his texts, and the ways the past reflects his phobias and obsessions. Special attention will be given to three of Lovecraft’s works: At the Mountains of Madness, ‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family’ and ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth.’ The novella is a clear example of how Lovecraft combines the history of a primitive alien species with the shape of his own racial views, whereas the other two tales explore the realm of the family heritage and its relation with Darwinism as well as, in a broader sense, the corruption of lineages. Key Words: Lovecraft, Darwinism, evolution, science, past, corruption, history, heritage. ***** 1. Introduction In a column published in 1918 in the Conservative, celebrating the alliance between England and the United States during World War I, H. P. Lovecraft wrote: The strongest tie in the domain of mankind, and the only potent source of social unity, is that mystic essence compounded of race, language and culture; a heritage descended from the remote past. This tie no human force can break, whatever political revolution may by such an agency be effected. It may be temporarily submerged by the base prejudices of passion and the detestable contamination caused by alien blood, but rise it must when overwhelming stress calls out man’s deeper emotions, and sweeps aside the superficialities of arbitrary modes of thoughts. 1 The past is a cradle of knowledge and pride for Lovecraft. It is the moment when, according to the writer, you have to look for the origins of the Englishness of the New England where he was raised. Lovecraft was born in Providence (RI) in 1890. His father passed away untimely, and little Lovecraft grew up in the colonial house of his grandfather. The latter had been the one to introduce the future author to the classical texts of Greek

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__________________________________________________________________ and Roman writers as well as to The Arabian Nights - a source of inspiration for the famous character of Arab Abdul Alhazred. Lovecraft’s fascination with the past is then something he cultivated since childhood, and it had become one of his main interests in life, as he admitted in one of his letters: I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups - (a) Love of the strange and the fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities. 2 2. How to Get Back to the Past Exploring the realm of the days gone by, many Lovecraft’s stories reflect his constant emphasis on the past. His narratives often revolve around the discovery of a certain terrible truth hidden to mankind, usually personified in an alien race threatening the planet. The main character is typically a researcher, a scientist or an artist, for whom the discovery has most terrible consequences - mental insanity, suicide or death. There are several ways in which the past is made tangible in Lovecraft’s narratives. The most explicit one is when narrating the bygone events, like those recounted in ‘The Shadow Out of Time,’ where Professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee is possessed by a member of the Great Race of Yith. Past and present collide when the ancient alien species who dwelled on our planet several million years ago transcend these boundaries through the manipulation of Peaslee. 3 Something similar happens in At the Mountains of Madness, where Dyer and Danforth, two explorers in the South Pole, discover the remains of an ancient civilisation, the Elder Ones, and learn about their history by reading the bas-reliefs they find in the walls of a huge, millennial city. They also become acquainted with the Elder One’s relationship with the shoggoths. These are powerful protoplasmic creatures made to be used as slaves in the construction of their creators’ huge polar city, and controlled by means of telepathic ties. At a certain point in history, the Elder Ones had to suffocate a rebellion organised by the shoggoths which as a result of natural evolution developed certain autonomous initiative. 4 Another way in which the past is made omnipresent in Lovecraft’s tales is by means of genealogies and family trees. The importance of lineages, blood and genetic heritage is a cornerstone in the narratives such as ‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,’ where the reader learns about the Jermyn family. This is a kind of Usher-like cursed lineage, disrupted with violent and strange deaths and suicides, in the same way Poe condemns a family to disappearance in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ 5 The final discovery will shock the only surviving protagonist, Arthur Jermyn; namely, all his relatives turn out to

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__________________________________________________________________ be the descendants of their human ancestors and a white ape goddess who lived in a hidden city in the middle of the African jungle. This hideous past of the Jermyn family summarises the idea of cursed and corrupted blood, which has also been incarnated in the figures of the deep ones in ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth.’ The deep ones, creatures half-human, half-fish, are taking control of the town of Innsmouth. They miscegenate with the human inhabitants, creating creatures which initially look like humans, but then, after several years, become too monstrous to be shown in public, and escape to the depths of the ocean. Thus, with this revelation Lovecraft’s narrative displays the eerie ability of the past to haunt the present. The classical motif of the haunting past suffers a scientific twist as described by Fred Botting: The forms of history deployed, appearing like ghosts in the present, were less feudal and romantic and more an effect of scientific discourse: guilts and fears haunted individuals and families, while primal patterns of instinct and motivation threatened the humanity of the human species. Science, with its chemical concoctions, mechanical laboratories and electrical instruments became a new domain for the encounter with dark powers, now secular, mental and animal rather than supernatural. 6 The past permeates the present and brings back its secrets. Lovecraft knew that humans were the result of years of evolution, as will be discussed in the following pages, and that was probably one of the biggest tragedies the past held for the writer. 3. Fish n’ Apes Why was Lovecraft so obsessed with the past? What was he attempting to illuminate? Having spent his childhood in the protective bourgeois environment of the big colonial house of his grandfather, he declared himself as a strong traditional man, who followed the old-fashioned standards of his New Englishness: I find by experience that my chief pleasure is in symbolic identification with the landscape and tradition-stream to which I belong - hence I follow the ancient, simple New England ways of living, and observe the principles of honour expected of a descendant of English gentlemen. It is pride and beauty-sense, I plus the automatic instincts of generations trained in certain conduct-patterns, which determine my conduct from day to day. 7

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__________________________________________________________________ This statement depicts the elitist attitude of the writer, and it is this background which can be identified in his shaping of his own vision of human beings and races. Lovecraft expressed his racial ideas in many of his letters, and they have been discussed by most of the scholars studying the writer. 8 I argue that he had strong and radical views on the question of racial relations, which were somehow moderated at the end of his life. What is, then, the connection between the past and these ideas, if any? I argue that it is possible to think of Lovecraft’s narratives within the Lacanian and Žižekian 9 framework: Lovecraft lived in a reality he could neither understand nor cope with. Immigration during the first third of the twentieth century was immense in the United States. New York, where Lovecraft spent a couple of years after his marriage, was a melting pot of cultures. New England and the whole country, according to the writer, were being corrupted due to miscegenation and immigrants. 10 In order to escape this reality, he took shelter in his fantasy, in the Real he created in his tales. 11 This Real where extraterrestrial species stalk mankind could be interpreted as an ideological transposition of the reality Lovecraft rejects as one could observe a certain parallelism between the alien species and the figure of the immigrant, both allegedly devastating the Western society. An example of how immigrants are depicted by Lovecraft can be found in ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth,’ which narrates the discovery of the secret hidden in the town. Lovecraft’s description of the deep ones is presented here: I think their predominant colour was a greyinsh-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked. 12 The inhabitants of Innsmouth who engage in sexual intercourses with the deep ones give birth to hybrids (defined by Darwin as ‘the offspring of the union of two distinct species’ 13 ). For Lovecraft, this process of hybridisation is a direct way for blood corruption, something which was never stated by Darwin. ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’ is semantically saturated with vocabulary related to rottenness and degradation, including terms such as ‘biological degeneration,’ ‘wormy decay,’ ‘hateful,’ ‘isolation,’ ‘degraded,’ ‘fishy smell,’ ‘disgusting’ and ‘repulsive.’ 14 It is

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__________________________________________________________________ interesting to notice the ideological implications of this tale, and the way Lovecraft describes hybrids in a clearly negative light, reinforcing the notion of the monstrous nature of inter-racial mixing. At the same time, the Innsmouth inhabitants exemplify a process of moral reversion. It is a step back for humanity since the intercourse with evil creatures corrupts the core of human nature. It is remarkable to notice the level of atavism emanating from ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth.’ On the one hand, the deep ones are the creatures in-between humans and fish. They come from the sea, the ancient cradle of life, and their intermingling with human beings triggers a process of genetic and evolutive reversion. Another way that the past haunts the present is with an ancient item which plays an important role in the story - a tiara which will be the key for the main character to discover his own origins. The description of the tiara made by Lovecraft is full of images of time: […] all hinted of remote secrets and unimaginable abysses in time and space [...] which one could not dissociate from a certain haunting and uncomfortable sense of pseudo-memory, as if they called up some image from deep cells and tissues whose retentive functions are wholle primal and awesomely ancestral. 15 A further way used by the author to express his fascination with the past is the quest of the protagonist for his origins. He is touring Innsmouth ‘celebrating my coming of age by a tour of New England - sightseeing, antiquarian and genealogical.’ 16 His findings are shocking and horrid. Is the narrator of ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’ a perverse metaphor of Darwin, and the whole tale a reflection upon the ideological connotations Darwinism had for H. P. Lovecraft? Is it the frame for Lovecraft to expose his distorted ideas of evolution and Darwinism, which will lead to the evident racism the writer showed in some of his texts? Or is it just another example in Lovecraft’s literature of the risks of science and research in the field of evolution and biology because they show us the Real, something we cannot cope with? I argue that the answers to these three questions can only be affirmative. These issues are closely linked, and ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’ explores them all. ‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family’ reinforces Lovecraft’s ideas of genealogical research, corruption of the blood and lineage, and hybridisation. However, due to the presence of the apish element in the whole narration and in the original sin committed by Arthur’s ancestor, the references to Darwinism are even more evident than in ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth.’ The protagonist discovers that he is a straight descendant of a kind of human-ape, and this terrible revelation leads him to a suicide. What Lovecraft describes, in a haunting and exaggerated way, is the feelings that many people probably suffered reading Darwin’s theses on evolution. 17

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__________________________________________________________________ S. T. Joshi, in his essay ‘What Happens in “Arthur Jermyn,”’ comments on this feeling of horror that is engendered in the reader by the story’s opening passage: Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemonical hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species - if separate species we be - for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world. 18 Joshi’s remark ‘if separate species we be’ implies that humanity is vastly corrupted by Jermyn’s blood. Moreover, Joshi asserts that Lovecraft suggests that the origins of white civilisation are in Africa, and the starting point is the miscegenation between a white race and apes. Thus, all human blood is corrupted and mixed with apes. 19 The ideological implications of the text are far-reaching: Lovecraft was horrified by Darwin’s discovery of the apish origins of humans. Apart from that, his texts might be interpreted within the frames of the notion of knowledge as perdition - something that gives access to the sphere of forbidden that human beings should not be aware of. It is clear that Lovecraft read and assimilated Darwin and his theses on evolution. Introducing these ideas into his own literary works, he depicted Darwinism as a scientific source of horror. Lovecraft’s ideology in terms of racial prejudices is captured in his texts, and he misuses Darwin as the platform to expose them, as in the case of hybrids in ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’ or the corrupted lineage of Arthur Jermyn. Also At the Mountains of Madness has been interpreted in terms of racial and hegemonic relations. 20 The Elder Ones are depicted as creators of life, a wise alien race with artistic sensitivity, precursors of life on our planet. The narrator even shows sympathy for them: Poor devils! After all, they were not evil things of their kind. They were the men of another age and another order of being. Nature had played a hellish jest on them. 21 The shoggoths, on the contrary, are considered the main source of horror and evil in the text. They are the personification of chaos and wickedness: It was the utter, objective embodiment of the fantastic novelist’s “thing that should not be”; and its nearest comprehensible analogue is a vast, onrushing subway train as one sees it from a station platform - the great black front looming colossally out of

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__________________________________________________________________ infinite subterranean distance, constellated with strangely colored lights and filling the prodigious burrow as a piston fills a cylinder. […] It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train - a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. 22 The shoggoths, stupid creatures without any kind of goal in their lives except to serve their creators, are the ‘bad guys’ in the tale. Their revolt is suffocated and, for Lovecraft, that is the way it has to be. The racist, elitist undertone of the tale is too obvious to be denied. 4. Conclusions The ability of the past to engender feelings of horror in society permeates Lovecraft’s writings, through the joint strategies of revelation and genetic inheritance. Lovecraft was a quintessential example of the gentleman out of his time, being unable to assimilate the changes brought about by the collapse of the aristocracy and the surge in immigration in New England. Turning to the sciences and Darwinism, Lovecraft found not solace but further horror. The past, which was supposed/expected to bring him peace turned to be another source of conflict. Science demonstrated that the origin of human life was far from being what Lovecraft considered pure, that races intermingled in a never-ending melting pot, and that all human beings shared a common ancestry.

Notes 1

H. P. Lovecraft, ‘Anglo-Sadondom’, in Collected Essays Volume 5: Philosophy, Autobiography & Miscellany, ed. Sunand T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006), 33. 2 H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters I (1911-1924), eds. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City: Arkham House Publishers, 1965), 154. 3 H. P. Lovecraft, ‘The Shadow out of Time’, in The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories, ed. Sunand T. Joshi (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 335-395. 4 H. P. Lovecraft, ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, in The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, ed. Sunand T. Joshi (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 304.

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Edgar A. Poe, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, in Poe: Poetry, Tales & Selected Essays, eds. Patrick F. Quinn and G. R. Thompson (New York: The Library of America, 1996), 317-336. 6 Fred Botting, Gothic (London: Routledge, 1996), 12-13. 7 H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters II (1925-1929), eds. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City: Arkham House Publishers, 1968), 288-289. 8 See e. g. Sunand T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (New Jersey: Wildside Press, 1990), 74-80; Sunand T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (West Warwick: Necronomicon Press, 1996), 586-591; Sunand T. Joshi, ‘Lovecraft’s Alien Civilizations: A Political Interpretation’, in Primal Sources. Essays on H. P. Lovecraft, ed. Joshi T. Sunand (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003), 108-110; Maurice Lévy, Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 26-29. 9 See Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), 191196; Jacques Lacan, The Seminar. Book I. Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953-54 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 66-70. 10 Lévy, Lovecraft, 61-62. 11 Lacan, Seminar. Book I, 66; Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1996), 187. In this chapter ‘Real’ is understood as something which cannot be expressed through language and is unrepresentable. This is in contrast to ‘reality’ which is the result of the different representations of symbolic and imaginary articulations. 12 H. P. Lovecraft, ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’, in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, ed. Sunand T. Joshi (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 328. 13 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of the Species, ed. William Bynum (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 446. 14 Lovecraft, ‘Shadow over Innsmouth’, 279-287. 15 Ibid., 276-277. 16 Ibid., 269-270. 17 William Bynum, ‘Introduction’, in Darwin, On the Origin, xlii-xlvi. 18 Sunand T. Joshi, ‘What Happens in “Arthur Jermyn”’, in Primal Sources: Essays on H. P. Lovecraft, ed. Sunand T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003), 159. 19 Ibid., 159-161. 20 Joshi, Lovecraft, 491-492. 21 Lovecraft, Mountains, 330. 22 Ibid., 334-335.

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Bibliography Berruti, Massimo. ‘Self, Other and the Evolution of Lovecraft’s Treatment of Outsideness’. Lovecraft Annual 3 (2009): 109–146. Botting, Fred. Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996. Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of the Species. Edited by William Bynum. London: Penguin Books, 2009. Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1996. Joshi, Sunand T. H. P. Lovecraft. The Decline of the West. New Jersey: Wildside Press, 1990. —––. H. P. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick: Necronomicon Press, 1996. —––. ‘Lovecraft’s Alien Civilizations: A Political Interpretation’. In Primal Sources. Essays on H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Sunand T. Joshi, 104–125. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003. —––. ‘What Happens in “Arthur Jermyn”’. In Primal Sources. Essays on H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Sunand T. Joshi, 159–161. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book I. Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Lévy, Maurice. Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1988. Lovecraft, H. P. Selected Letters I (1911-1924). Edited by August Derleth, and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City: Arkham House Publishers, 1965. —––. Selected Letters II (1925-1929). Edited by August Derleth, and Donald Wandrei. Sauk City: Arkham House Publishers, 1968.

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__________________________________________________________________ —––. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Edited by Sunand T. Joshi. London: Penguin Books, 1999. —––. The Thing in the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories. Edited by Sunand T. Joshi. London: Penguin Books, 2001. —––. ‘Anglo-Saxondom’. In Collected Essays Volume 5: Philosophy, Autobiography & Miscellany, edited by Sunand T. Joshi, 32–33. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006. Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989. Juan Luis Pérez de Luque is a Research Fellow at the University of Córdoba (Spain). He is currently exploring the influence of science in the narratives of H. P. Lovecraft, and the implications of this in the author’s conception of reality.

The Monstrous Hermaphroditic Clone as Backward Progress: A Reading of Ralf Isau’s Thriller Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer Angelika Baier Abstract A lot has been written both about clones and hermaphrodites. This chapter, however, focuses on hermaphroditic clones. Clones and hermaphrodites share central features of what contemporary society considers monstrous. Whereas hermaphrodites transgress the gender binary, clones are illegally produced beings that seemingly copy another, already living person, questioning thereby the centrality of sexual procreation and death for humanity. Moreover, both clones and hermaphrodites hold a complex relation to temporality. Hermaphrodites are frequently conceptualised as primordial beings existing before the order of all things. As Plato’s Symposium tells us, today’s state of humanity can be seen as a result of the primeval, (partly) androgynous beings’ attack upon the gods, which led to a division of all creatures. In accordance with Plato, Baudrillard emphasises that even today humanity is driven by the desire to re-establish the earlier state of wholeness. Through the biotechnological means of (copy-)cloning, Baudrillard reasons, mankind attempts to regain control over its past and future by eventually superseding (sexual) differentiation, procreation and death. In this context, the following chapter presents a reading of the German sci-fi-thriller, Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer (The Gallery of Lies or The Careless Sleeper) by Ralf Isau, in which self-fertilising, hermaphroditic clones are manufactured as the next generation of mankind. I argue that the hermaphroditic clone, which superposes the past and the future, can be seen as a symbol of what this chapter calls backward progress, a concept that is further explored by referring to the ideas developed by Plato, Baudrillard, Darwin and Freud. By taking a look at the ways in which Isau’s thriller deals with its allegedly monstrous creatures, this analysis shows that the hermaphroditic clones and the thriller itself engage in complex temporalities that, in fact, undermine notions of controllability and dedifferentiation that are usually associated with clones. Key Words: Cloning, hermaphroditism, intersex, crime fiction, Ralf Isau, Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer. ***** 1. Introduction Much research has been done in regard to the depictions of cloning and intersex/hermaphroditism in contemporary literature and film. 1 This chapter, however, brings cloning as the future means of procreation into contact with

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__________________________________________________________________ antique notions of the hermaphrodite as the primeval being. It thereby focuses on a reading of the German sci-fi thriller, The Gallery of Lies or The Careless Sleeper (Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer) by Ralf Isau (2005), 2 whose protagonists are hermaphroditic clones. As the means of reproductive cloning are illegal in most contemporary nation states, both the clone and its creator trespass the borders of civil law. Therefore, cloning becomes particularly attractive subject to crime fiction writers. Given that in Foucauldian terms the monster ‘combines the impossible with the forbidden’ 3 and is ‘essentially a mixture of two realms,’ 4 hermaphroditic clones unite several features of what contemporary Western society considers monstrous. Not only do the illegally produced clones transgress the gender binary; they also question the importance of sexual unification, procreation, and death for humanity. Similarly to the monstrous hermaphroditic clone that superposes antiquity and futurity, crime fiction holds a ‘complex relation to temporality’ 5 as pieces of crime fiction focus on the past history of a murderous deed, the present time of investigation and on the future when such an event will no longer be likely to happen. The complex temporalities of both the hermaphroditic clones and the structure of crime fiction are an important aspect of the following reading of Isau’s novel as they reveal the monstrous (over-)coding of both the clones and the thriller as a whole. In what follows, I will first examine the entanglements between hermaphroditism and cloning. In regard to that, the notion of backward progress will be introduced, referring to theories and concepts developed by Plato, Baudrillard, Darwin and Freud. Afterwards, I will take a look at the ways in which Isau’s thriller deals with its monstrous creatures. 2. Looking into a Backward Future According to Luc Brisson, the social order has been characterised by a predominantly heteronormative system of gender dimorphism from antiquity onwards. 6 In ancient times, humans who displayed the physical characteristics of both sexes were left to die as they were considered monstra, divine signs from the gods that the social order was in danger. Ancient mythology, however, conceptualises the status quo of genderdifferentiation as a derivation from a former state of divine wholeness. In search of an explanation for this succession, the famous speech held by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium presents a story of primordial, globular-shaped beings that consisted of two halves - both male, both female, or one male and one female (the androgynes). These beings planned an attack on gods. In order to weaken their abilities, Zeus found no other remedy but separation. Ever since, humans have been devoting themselves to seeking their lost half. Sexual encounters have made it possible to temporarily re-establish the lost unity. Consequently, sexual difference, sexuality and sexual procreation present themselves as secondary ‘inventions’ whose goal is to bind the superfluous energy of the formerly recalcitrant beings.

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__________________________________________________________________ For Baudrillard, however, the human of today is still ‘unable to brave its own diversity,’ 7 and humanity itself fosters a deep desire for regression. In this regard, Baudrillard refers to Freud, who states that ‘It seems, then, that an instinct [drive] is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things [italics in the original].’ 8 Thus, humanity deliberately works towards a backward future, towards a state before the order of all things: After the great revolution in the evolutionary process - the advent of sex and death - we have the great involution: it aims, through cloning and many other techniques, to liberate us from sex and death. […] We are actively working at the “dis-information” of our species through the nullification of differences. 9 This quote illustrates that, for Baudrillard, it is the biotechnological means of cloning that facilitates this movement back to a state of primordial wholeness. Cloning, or cell nuclear transfer, has been associated with processes of serial production. 10 A clone shares its genetic code with another person - not only duplicating them but also enabling them to overcome mortality. Sexual unification, on the other hand, is deemed unnecessary for reproduction. From a human standpoint, the notions of primordial, undifferentiated wholeness and a state of immortality can be attributed either to protozoa and their asexual means of reproduction by cell division, or to gods. Consequently, clones transgress the borders both towards the primitive and to the divine, which marks them as monstrous in multiple ways. In that regard, the clone shares central features of monstrosity with the hermaphrodite who has also been associated with primordial beings, as we have seen with Plato. In The Descent of Man, Darwin holds that ‘some extremely remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite.’ 11 For Freud, in turn, it is only ‘natural to transfer this conception to the psychic sphere.’ 12 Even nowadays the notion of all vertebrates’ anatomical and psychological hermaphroditic condition is widespread. Due to analogous evolutionary processes at the phylo- and ontogenetic level, hermaphroditism has become a natural stage for every human - one to be overcome, however, as traces of physical or psychological bisexuality in the adult human being are associated with a lack of evolution. According to these theorems, human hermaphrodites remain monstrously backward because parts of their bodies and minds stopped developing at an early stage, remaining at a lower, animal-like level. On the other hand, the hermaphrodite alludes to notions of a primordial asexuality and a status before or beyond (gendered) difference, which resembles the clone’s divine features. In summary, both hermaphrodites and clones hold a complex relation to temporality. For Baudrillard, the clone illustrates that ‘the very “progress” of

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__________________________________________________________________ science in fact does not follow a line but a curve - a twisted or hairpin curve that turns back toward total involution.’ 13 Freud’s and Darwin’s concepts of the primordial bisexuality of every human’s body and psyche, however, allude to the fact that the (monstrous) past is always present in the now and then. Elisabeth Grosz emphasises that ‘while time and futurity remains open-ended, the past provides a propulsion in directions, unpredictable in advance, which, in retrospect have emerged from the unactualised possibilities that it yields.’ 14 Hence, the future is, in fact, always a backward movement, and the hermaphroditic clone, both animalistic and divine, best embodies the concept of a future as backward progress. In the following, I will take a closer look at the ways in which Die Galerie der Lügen takes up the motif of the hermaphroditic clone, its multiple monstrous deviances and its complex relations to temporality. 3. The Gallery of Lies Die Galerie der Lügen is set in a not too distant future. In the London of 2007, the British Parliament is about to re-discuss the legal scopes of the reproductive cloning of humans. This practice is still illegal, but the Parliament discusses the introduction of amendments that will facilitate it. Initially the thriller focuses on a series of burglaries that have been committed in several European museums. After the first break-in, fingerprints lead to the British science journalist Alex Daniels, who is consequently arrested. In prison, she becomes acquainted with Darwin Shaw, an insurance detective at ArtCare, a company where all the stolen or destroyed art works were insured. Eventually, Alex and Darwin engage in their own investigation. While still in prison, however, Alex is contacted by Theo, who offers to help her out in return for a favour: Theo wants Alex to publish comments on the stolen paintings in the newspaper. She does as he desires, exposing more and more of the so-called ‘Gallery of Lies,’ which reveals Alex’ own familial affiliations. It turns out that Alex and Theo are clone siblings, brought about by means of reproductive cloning at the beginning of the 1980s. After the illegal mission was brought to a halt shortly after the birth of the clones, the team leader Thorgrimm Gunnarsson was forced to change his name and profession. Under the alias of Martin Cadwell, Gunnarsson completed a degree in art, and became the leader of the art insurance company ArtCare. Expecting the 2008 amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act to facilitate reproductive cloning, he plans to return to scientific research in order to continue his work on cloning technology. However, since the former illegal actions are not to be exempted from punishment, the clone siblings are to be eliminated. For this job Cadwell hires Theo, who has his own ulterior motives taking up the mission. Besides Alex and Theo, there are fourteen additional clone siblings who are related by having Cadwell as their genetic father. Every clone is a true hermaphrodite who exhibits fully developed male and female genitals that are able to perform self-fertilisation. Yet, the fate of the clones differs. Following the

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__________________________________________________________________ common treatment principle for intersexed persons developed in the 1950s, some of the clones (like Theo) were surgically corrected and assigned to one sex; others (like Alex) were left ‘complete.’ As a result of the operations Theo feels stunted and mutilated, and attempts to kill his fellow siblings who had to endure the same treatment for betraying their ‘true nature.’ Theo, as it turns out, is also responsible for the theft of the paintings insured by his genetic father’s company. The robberies are conceptualised as a personal vendetta against Cadwell; with the help of the newspaper comments on the ‘Gallery of Lies’ written by uninformed Alex, Theo plans to impede Cadwell’s return to the field by opening up the public’s and the Parliament’s eyes to the harmful outcomes of reproductive cloning and the selfproclaimed scientific grandeur. In accordance with the genre conventions, the thriller ends with the mystery solved. Thrillers move back to the past in order to understand the present and to influence the future, implying that information about the past can be retrieved (although not easily) and re-framed into a linear, coherent story. Consequently, at the end, the reader of Isau’s text allegedly knows everything about the criminals and their deeds. If we take a look at the ways in which Die Galerie der Lügen deals with the hermaphroditic clones at an argumentative level, the following section will reveal that the thriller engages with the notion of the past’s controllability in two different ways. 4. Evolving Critique A closer look at Cadwell’s mission reveals that it heads towards a refinement of humankind. 15 The clones are determined to skip several steps on the evolutionary ladder by bringing an end to the ‘narrow-minded gender wars’ (‘kleinlicher Krieg der Geschlechter’). 16 As Cadwell does not only hold a degree in biology but also in art, it is hardly surprising that the design of his hermaphroditic clone creatures, who share his DNA code, refers to antique concepts of perfection and harmony. 17 Blurring the boundaries between art and life, Cadwell’s ideas of future and progress are influenced by the past. Due to his fixation on flawlessness and unity, his notion of progress follows Baudrillard’s concept of an involution back to a long lost putative origin. Indeed, Cadwell promotes an ahistorical, aestheticised vision of perfection and puts himself in god-like control over the future development of his DNA code. Alex and Theo, in contrast, are the followers of the so-called Intelligent Design (ID) movement that questions science conducted on the basis of the theory of evolution. 18 ID admits to microevolution involving natural selection and the speciation within one kind. Macroevolution however, for instance evolution between kinds, is only to be engendered through the intervention of an intelligent (god-like) designer 19 as existing kinds, like humans, exhibit genetic blueprints of an ‘irreducible complexity.’ 20 Thus, a deliberate change of these blueprints by biotechnological means challenges the (divine) natural order. Alex stresses that

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘natural’ hermaphrodites (i.e. intersexed persons) have already demonstrated the destructive potential of mutations because intersexed persons have often been infertile. 21 As a consequence, deliberate, biotechnologically created mutations inevitably lead, in her opinion, to harmful outcomes as the hermaphroditic clones are unable to fit into contemporary (divinely natural) society. 22 In regard to this, the thriller proves Alex and Theo right. Society, to begin with, forces the hermaphroditic clones to lead a life within one gender role. Whereas Alex lives as a female, defining herself as being 60% female and 40% male, 23 Theo was surgically assigned to one sex and suffers under the painful outcomes of his various operations. Besides, the multiple medical examinations that the clones had to endure during childhood led to traumatising experiences. Their physical otherness left them in isolation and loneliness as the clones were too human not to care about their social exclusion, yet too monstrous to be accepted the way they were. Consequently, the clone siblings criticise society for its practices of segregation. This criticism, however, is based on a line of argumentation that - not unlike Cadwell’s - prompts an ahistorical, quasi-divine notion of perfection. The control over the (DNA-)code is given over to a divine instance that, ultimately, acknowledges the monstrosity of the clones’ very existence. In the light of this understanding Alex and Theo reject the theory of evolution in favour of a truth of their own. Yet, at a practical level, the protagonists handle the situation of their allegedly monstrous lives quite differently. As will be shown in the last section, it is at this point that the thriller itself moves further into a zone of ambivalence and complex temporalities. 5. Involuted Genres In regard to his embodied life as a clone, Theo tries to act like God not unlike his father. Theo’s actual name is Kevin Kendish. Yet, in accordance with his alias, he executes his power over life and death by killing his surgically corrected clone siblings and eventually Cadwell before finally committing suicide. His criminal deviance can be regarded a deliberate sign of an antisocial positionality. 24 Alex, in turn, claims her status as a human by working on an integration of the hermaphroditic clones into the 2007 society of London. By the end of the thriller, she agrees to participate in writing a book on intersexed persons. Alex also contacts her other clone siblings in all parts of the world, creating forms of kinship beyond the traditional family. Theo and Alex clearly demonstrate that in spite of their shared genetic code they never fully resemble their progenitor, not to mention their siblings. To be the master of the DNA does not mean to be able to determine the future. 25 In contrast to Baudrillard’s notion of involution as a seemingly linear movement back to the past, and in favour of Freud’s and Darwin’s concepts of complex temporalities,

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__________________________________________________________________ cloning does not lead towards controllability, uniformity and nullification of difference. According to Grosz: This is the temporality of […] a reconstruction whose aim is never the faithful reproduction of the past so much as the forging of a play for the future as the new. 26 In that regard, the thriller as a whole underlines the notion of complex temporalities. At a surface level, it provides us with a mystery solved. Theo’s first stolen painting, Magritte’s Le Dormeur Téméraire (1928), whose title alludes to the thriller’s subtitle The Careless Sleeper, is of major importance for the investigation. The painting depicts a person asleep in a box that lies above a grey stone engraved with several symbols. Over the course of the novel, Cadwell is identified as the careless sleeper who has not recognised Theo’s actual motives for collaboration. The painting’s symbols are used by Theo as a code for his series of burglaries, as after each robbery he leaves one of the symbols behind in the place of the stolen works. Thus, Theo leads the investigators Alex and Darwin on their way to the ‘truth’ about the ‘Gallery of Lies’ of Cadwell’s experiment. This total control over the code and its information, however, is subverted by the fact that Le Dormeur Téméraire does not actually mean The Careless Sleeper but The Reckless Sleeper. Thus, quite recklessly, the author bases the thriller’s code and the mystery solution on a wrong translation. In a similarly reckless way, the novel combines elements of numerous discourses (like the theory of evolution, art history, Greek mythology, the intersex movement, post-colonial critique, Intelligent Design, cloning etc.), and it quotes dozens of famous persons. With this overload of information, it is impossible to detect a coherent line of argumentation progressive and conservative ideas are folded into each other. The thriller presents itself as an ‘involuted phenomenon where otherwise unrelated texts are involved and entangled, intricately interwoven, interrupting and inhabiting each other,’ 27 as Sarah Dillon put it. In that regard, involution refers to a folding in or simultaneity of information that does not form a coherent whole. Thus, having itself been marked as monstrous, the thriller illustrates that the future is always a product of the past and that the new has to come from the past’s unrealised potentialities. Yet, it is impossible to simply go back to the past, to a state before or beyond the order. Every movement has to take a place within today’s order, which is characterised by multiple struggles over the ‘real meaning’ of the past and its possibilities for the future. In that regard, the hermaphroditic, divine and animalistic clones are symbols of the unpredictable, monstrous potentiality within everyone. 28 They also illustrate, however, the hardships of representing such a potential - even though it is indispensable for creating anything new in society, those who embody it still experience social exclusion and isolation.

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Notes 1

For publications on cloning in literature and film, see John Marks, ‘Clone Stories: “Shallow are the Souls That have Forgotten How to Shudder”’, Paragraph 33, No. 3 (2010): 331-353. See also Stefan Halft, ‘Privacy: The Right to Clone? Zur Semantik und Funktion von “Privatheit” im Teildiskurs über das Reproduktive Klonen von Menschen’, in Privatheit: Formen und Funktionen, eds. Dennis Gräf, Stefan Halft and Verena Schmöller (Passau: Karl Stutz, 2011), 183-212. For publications on intersex/hermaphroditism in literature and film, see Debra Shostak, ‘Theory Uncompromised by Practicality: Hybridity in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex’, Contemporary Literature 49, No. 3 (2008): 383-412. See also Angelika Baier, ‘Autobiografisches Erzählen zwischen den Geschlechtern: Der Österreichische Dokumentarfilm Tintenfischalarm’, in Performativität statt Tradition: Autobiografische Diskurse von Frauen, eds. Brigritte Jirku and Marion Schulz (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012), 69-89. 2 Ralf Isau, Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer (Bergisch Gladbach: Bastei Lübbe, 2005). As no English translation of the novel exists, all quotes have been translated by me. As the hermaphroditic clones in Isau’s thriller are manufactured according to antique notions of completeness and harmony, this chapter prefers the term ‘hermaphroditic’ over the term ‘intersexed.’ In regard to contemporary political struggles of intersexed persons, however, the term ‘intersexed’ is more appropriate; see Morgan Holmes, ed., Critical Intersex (Surrey, Burlington: Ashgate, 2008). 3 Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974-1975, trans. Graham Burchell (London and New York: Verso, 2004), 56. 4 Ibid., 63. 5 Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003), 130. 6 Luc Brisson, Sexual Ambivalence, Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in GraecoRoman Antiquity (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 7. 7 Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Final Solution: Cloning beyond the Human and the Inhuman’, in The Vital Illusion, ed. Julia Witwer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 15. 8 Sigmund Freud, ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVIII (1920-1922): Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works, ed. James Strachey, accessed August 27, 2012, http://www.pepweb.org/document.php?id=se.018.0001a&type=hitlist&num=0&query=zone1%2C paragraphs|zone2%2Cparagraphs|origrx%2Cgw.013.0003a#hit1, 36. 9 Baudrillard, ‘The Final Solution’, 8.

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On the metaphor of copy-cloning in the literary discourse see: Corinna Caduff, ‘Die Literarische Darstellung des Klons’, in Zukunft der Literatur: Literatur der Zukunft. Gegenwartsliteratur und Literaturwissenschaft, eds. Reto Sorg, Adrian Mettauer and Wolfgang Proß (Munich: Fink, 2003), 177-178. 11 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in two volumes: Vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1871), 207. 12 Sigmund Freud, ‘The Sexual Aberrations’, in Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, trans. A. A. Brill (New York, Washington: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 1920), The Gutenberg Project Edition, accessed August 31, 2012, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14969/14969-h/14969-h.htm. 13 Baudrillard, ‘Final Solution’, 9. 14 Elisabeth Grosz, ‘Darwin and Feminism: Preliminary Investigations for a Possible Alliance’, Australian Feminist Studies 14, No. 29 (1999): 42. 15 Isau, Galerie der Lügen, 412. 16 Ibid., 397. 17 Ibid., 143. 18 For further information on Intelligent Design and a critique on its theorems, see Christoph Schrader, Darwins Werk und Gottes Beitrag: Evolutionstheorie und Intelligent Design (Stuttgart: Kreuz Forum, 2007); see also the contributions in John Brockman, ed., Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement (New York: Vintage Books, 2006). 19 See Jerry A. Coyne, ‘Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name’, in Brockman, Intelligent Thought, 19. 20 For further information on the concept of ‘irreducible complexity,’ see Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, and Singapore: The Free Press, 1996), 39-48. 21 Isau, Galerie der Lügen, 124. 22 Ibid., 412. 23 Ibid., 280. 24 For further information on the notion of the antisocial, see Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004). 25 See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), 102-103. 26 Grosz, ‘Darwin and Feminism’, 42. 27 Sarah Dillon, The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory (London and New York: Continuum, 2007), 4. 28 In ‘Darwin and Feminism’, 41, Grosz defines it as ‘productive monstrosity.’

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Bibliography Behe, Michael. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, and Singapore: The Free Press, 1996. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994. —––. ‘The Final Solution: Cloning beyond the Human and the Inhuman’. In The Vital Illusion, edited by Julia Witwer, 1–30. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Brisson, Luc. Sexual Ambivalence, Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in GraecoRoman Antiquity. Translated by Jane Lloyd. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2002. Caduff, Corinna. ‘Die Literarische Darstellung des Klons’. In Zukunft der Literatur: Literatur der Zukunft: Gegenwartsliteratur und Literaturwissenschaft, edited by Reto Sorg, Adrian Mettauer, and Wolfgang Proß, 169–183. Munich: Fink, 2003. Coyne, Jerry A. ‘Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name’. In Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement, edited by John Brockman, 3–23. New York: Vintage Books, 2006. Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Vol. 1. London: John Murray, 1871. Dillon, Sarah. The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory. London and New York: Continuum, 2007. Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004. Freud, Sigmund. ‘The Sexual Aberrations’. In Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. Translated by A. A. Brill. New York, Washington: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 1920. The Gutenberg Project Edition. Accessed August 27, 2012. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14969/14969-h/14969-h.htm.

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__________________________________________________________________ —––. ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle.’ In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XVIII (1920-1922): Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works, edited by James Strachey, 1–64. Accessed August 27, 2012. http://www.pepweb.org/document.php?id=se.018.0001a&type=hitlist&num=0&query=zone1%2C paragraphs%7Czone2%2Cparagraphs%7Corigrx%2Cgw.013.0003a#hit1. Foucault, Michel. Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974-1975. Translated by Graham Burchell. London and New York: Verso, 2004. Grosz, Elisabeth. ‘Darwin and Feminism: Preliminary Investigations for a Possible Alliance’. Australian Feminist Studies 14, No. 29 (1999): 31–45. Halft, Stefan. ‘Privacy: The Right to Clone? Zur Semantik und Funktion von “Privatheit” im Teildiskurs über das Reproduktive Klonen von Menschen’. In Privatheit: Formen und Funktionen, edited by Dennis Gräf, Stefan Halft, and Verena Schmöller, 183–212. Passau: Verlag Karl Stutz, 2011. Isau, Ralf. Die Galerie der Lügen oder Der Unachtsame Schläfer. Bergisch Gladbach: Bastei Lübbe, 2007. Kosofsky-Sedgwick, Eve. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003. Marks, John. ‘Clone Stories: “Shallow are the Souls That have Forgotten How to Shudder”’. Paragraph 33, No. 3 (2010): 331–353. Schrader, Christoph. Darwins Werk und Gottes Beitrag. Evolutionstheorie und Intelligent Design. Stuttgart: Kreuz Forum, 2007. Sharpe, Andrew. Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of the Law. New York: Routledge, 2010. Angelika Baier is a research assistant in the German Department at the University of Vienna. Currently, she works on the Austrian Science Fund-project Discursive Intersections in Literature on Hermaphroditism. Her research interests comprise gender studies, contemporary literature and (deviant) corporealities.

Monstrosising Infertility: Supernatural Barren Females in the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska Abstract The representation of an infertile woman as a monster has been long present in the cultural history of the world. The inability to bear children was well established as one of the main characteristics in the construction of the monstrous female already in ancient times and the Middle Ages. Although it is occasionally argued that the figure of the infertile woman has lost its monstrous face in the contemporary culture of the West, it does not seem to be so. This chapter considers the notions of (in)fertility in the famous Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer as determining the construction of monstrous and human femininities. While Barbara Creed places sexuality as the key to understand the monstrous in the feminine, Meyer’s saga takes it one step further, narrowing the sexuality factor to the inability of giving birth to a child. In consequence, infertile females are constructed as abject, monstrous and transgressors as theorised by Barbara Creed, Christine Bousfield, Julia Kristeva and Linda H. McGuire. Fertility and motherhood, on the other hand, are depicted as thoroughly human. Key Words: Monstrous femininity, infertility, female sexuality, Twilight, female vampires, female shape-shifters. ***** 1. Introduction The representation of the infertile woman as a monster has been long present in the cultural history of the world. Already in ancient times and Middle Ages the inability to bear children was constructed as one of the main characteristics of many monstrous women. As emphasised by Linda H. McGuire, the lack of reproductive capacities was attributed to both monstrous femininities in Greek mythology and medieval witches. These females were most often depicted as old, and thus unable to reproduce because of their age. Some, like the Greek Lamia, became unproductive as a result of the intervention of a divine force. 1 Reflecting the then social and cultural attitudes towards womanhood and (in)fertility, these female monsters were often associated with death and destruction, and their bodies were portrayed as dreadful and malformed. They often had distinctive animal features, or were at least closely linked to animals. This erosion of the boundaries between human and animal can be interpreted as the reinforcement of the message of the threatening nature of monstrous femininity. 2 It also accommodates Julia Kristeva’s and Christine Bousfield’s notions of abjection

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__________________________________________________________________ which they claim to be present ‘wherever there is ambivalence, ambiguity, the improper or the unclean, or the overflowing of boundaries, fusion and confusion.’ 3 Although it is occasionally argued that the figure of an infertile woman has lost its monstrous face in the contemporary culture of the West, 4 this is not entirely accurate. This chapter considers the notions of (in)fertility and motherhood in the famous Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer as determining the construction of monstrous and human femininities. While Barbara Creed identifies sexuality as the key to understanding the monstrous in the feminine, 5 Meyer’s saga takes it one step further, narrowing the sexuality factor to the inability of giving birth to a child. In consequence, infertile females are constructed as abject, monstrous and transgressors when the theories of Barbara Creed, Christine Bousfield, Julia Kristeva and Linda H. McGuire are taken into account. 6 Fertility and motherhood, on the other hand, are depicted as thoroughly human. 2. Distorted Bodies, Destructive Behaviours Throughout the Twilight saga none of the married female humans who are of reproductive age remain childless. In the last volume of the series even Bella becomes a mother, although this was at first believed to be impossible. At the same time, all of the non-human female characters have been denied the possibility of biological motherhood. Neither Leah Clearwater, a shape-shifter, nor Rosalie Hale, a vampire, are capable of conceiving a child. Although shape-shifters and vampires have been constructed in the series as each other’s antithesis and ‘natural enemies,’ 7 their women share a deep connection based on their experience of infertility. As supernatural barren females, Rosalie and Leah follow the pattern of monstrous femininities from ancient and medieval mythology. Being or looking like young girls, they are at the same time unnaturally aged. Leah finds herself ‘menopausal’ at the age of twenty 8 and immortal Rosalie is nearly one hundred years old. Although described as ‘the incarnation of pure beauty,’ 9 Rosalie’s body might still be perceived as distorted - its ultimate perfection abnormal, and thus inhuman. Leah’s body, on the other hand, is exposed to the much more evident distortion of shape-shifting. While attractive in its human form, it reveals its monstrosity every time Leah phases into a wolf. Simultaneously, just as Rosalie and other female vampires, she is incapable of any human, physical alteration connected with female monthly cycle or aging. The supernatural metamorphosis their bodies had been subjected to terminated or suspended their natural ability to change. They are described as ‘frozen’ or ‘frozen-in-time.’ 10 This can be interpreted as the opposition to physical transformations of a woman during pregnancy. If a female body cannot change, it cannot create life, and therefore might be associated with death. 11 This image is reinforced by the whiteness, hardness and coldness of Rosalie’s body, the stillness of her heart and her lack of a need to breathe - characteristics usually related to a sculpture or a corpse.

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__________________________________________________________________ Like in the case of the Greek Lamia, the childlessness of the supernatural women in the series is not their choice. It has been imposed on them if not by a divine force, then certainly by a force beyond their control or decision. For many of them it is a source of profound distress. Leah loathes her new supernatural existence which has been forced upon her by her genes and tribal magic. She blames it for the changes in her body, fearing they might be irreversible. Rosalie, on the other hand, lost her ability to conceive a child as a result of a violent sexual attack and a consequent ‘emergency vampirization.’ 12 Although it prevented her death and gave her a new life in a loving family, she still regards Carlisle’s action as an ‘unhappy ending.’ 13 A deep sense of loss is also experienced by Rosalie’s adoptive mother, Esme, whose only son passed away during her human existence. Outside of these cases within the Cullen family, other vampire women in the novels are deprived of their chance for (the substitute of) motherhood by the vampire law. The creation of ‘immortal children’ - that is turning a human child into a vampire - is as close to producing biological offspring as these monstrous women could ever get. However, this is a terrible crime in vampire society, penalised by death, as their progenies are conceptualised as savage and menacing. Deprived of the possibility of creating new life, barren female protagonists in the series are (or see themselves as) intimately associated with destruction and death. Female vampires who, in defiance of the law, attempt to produce immortal children are executed together with their offspring. Esme has a history of a suicidal attempt. Similarly, although to a lesser extent, Leah and Rosalie direct their destructive instincts inwards, constantly tormenting themselves with the contemplation of their lost motherhood prospects. Leah repeatedly reminds herself, and therefore the reader, of her monstrosity in an almost masochistic way. She describes herself as ‘a freak’ and ‘genetic deadend,’ 14 unresistingly surrendering to her fate as an abandoned lover. By her lack of attempt to win back Sam’s feelings she acknowledges her inferiority to his new girlfriend Emily. According to the imprinting theory, Emily offers Sam the highest chance for healthy wolf-children. Barren Leah perceives herself as no match for her super-fertile cousin, whose reproductive capacities cast her as an ideal future wife and mother. Unable to reconcile with her monstrous fate, Leah vents her frustration not only against herself but also against those close to her. She is described by Edward as ‘deliberately malicious’ and ‘making life exceedingly unpleasant’ for the rest of the pack, using her telepathic skills to inflict pain on her fellow wolves. 15 She is the one to bring up the issue of Embry’s illegitimate descent, to viciously predict Bella’s forthcoming death to heartbroken Jacob and to watch his fury and despair smiling. 16 Similarly, Rosalie is also the cause for much suffering for others. She is the one to carelessly inform Edward about Bella’s alleged suicide, which almost results in the couple’s violent death at the hands of Volturi. She also refuses to help her

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__________________________________________________________________ family protecting Bella from the blood-thirsty James, and discourteously voices her negative attitude towards her brother’s relationship. 17 Rosalie’s rage is directed particularly at Bella, who consequently begins to regard her company as undesired and disruptive. As Edward suggests on one occasion, Rose envies Bella her humanity. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the vampire female predominantly yearns for one particular aspect of being a human - the ability to conceive and give birth to a child. Still, even while struggling to satisfy her maternal needs, Rosalie is linked with death and destruction. Regarding Bella’s life an affordable prize for obtaining what she desires, she belittles the injuries inflicted upon Bella by her unborn child, claiming that ‘even normal human babies have been known to crack ribs.’ 18 Her monstrous nature becomes reaffirmed when, instead of helping, she loses control at the sight of Bella’s blood and attempts to attack her during the delivery. 19 3. Breaking the Boundaries Similarly to ancient and medieval notions of monstrous femininity, supernatural females in the Twilight series are conceptualised as multiple bordertransgressors. First of all, they overflow (both physically and mentally) the boundaries between human and monster. For some of them this is closely intertwined with transgressing the borders between motherhood and childlessness, which are in turn related to the borders between life and death. Esme, while still human, attempted to commit suicide after losing her only child - and thus becoming figuratively infertile. Along with her fertility she loses her humanity, as after having jumped off a cliff she is also subjected to an ‘emergency vampirization.’ Rosalie’s dreams of motherhood have, in turn, led her into an illconsidered relationship, which resulted in her being brutally raped. This monstrous sexual intercourse leaves her balancing on the border of life and death, and therefore moves Carlisle to change her into a vampire, saving her life but also forcing her into the state of childlessness and both metaphorical and literal dehumanisation. Apart from transgressing the boundaries between human and monster, life and death, as well as between motherhood (if only prospective) and childlessness, Twilight supernatural females, as theorised by McGuire, occupy a liminal space between human and animal. As a predator who feeds on raw blood, Rosalie succumbs to her animal instincts every time she hunts. Leah crosses the border between animal and human by literally assuming the shape and the conduct of a wolf. In addition, as the only shape-shifting woman, she destabilises the traditional dichotomy of male and female. Her incapacity to conceive and carry a child intimately connected to her shape-shifting abilities casts her, both literally and metaphorically, as an unwilling and unwanted member of a group formerly reserved exclusively for males. Deprived of the possibility of fulfilling a traditionally female role, she is forced to assume a traditionally male role as a

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__________________________________________________________________ fighter and protector of her tribe. Entering the pack, she brings confusion and a sense of disruption to the other wolves, along with a certain dose of awkwardness caused by her sexuality. Her male companions, who previously had no concerns about being naked in front of one another, suddenly become self-conscious, both regarding their own and Leah’s nudity. The additional discomfort is caused by Leah’s unrequited feelings for Sam and her anxious reflections on what the other wolves refer to with repulsion as ‘female stuff.’ 20 Leah’s despair and bewilderment caused by the changes in her body and the disruption of her menstrual cycle (openly, though unwillingly, expressed to the whole pack) trigger strong, negative reactions of her male companions. As Jacob emphasises, none of us like to think about that stuff with her. Who would? [...] I remembered cringing away from it just like everyone else. [...] None of us had wanted to deal with that breakdown. 21 As Magdalena Środa suggests, such reactions are often invoked by the breaking of taboo which is considered an attack on established cultural and societal structures, an attack on ‘the sacred.’ 22 The combination of embarrassment, incomprehension and repulsion that the male wolves experience on hearing Leah’s thoughts seems to indicate that the girl indeed acts in a highly objectionable, even shameful way. By exposing what she perceives as deficiency in her physical femininity she enters the abject sphere of ‘the improper,’ ‘the unclean.’ 23 Recognising her womanhood as defective, the wolf-girl never truly belongs with her tribe’s female community. Despite the fact that her mother is one of the tribe’s elders, it does not occur to Leah to turn to her for comfort or explanations. Nothing in the series indicates either that she might have a girlfriend in whom she could confide. The only woman to whom she has been truly attached is her cousin Emily to whom she can hardly reveal her fear and sorrow. Excluded from the female community of her tribe and disadvantaged (or even disabled) in what she perceives as the essence of womanhood, Leah challenges the traditional boundaries even further. By repeatedly striving to prove her endurance and skills in battle, she attempts to become a fully respected member of a maledominated group. Time and again she boasts about being the fastest in the pack and challenges the other wolves to race against her. She also attacks single-handedly a newborn vampire. This, however, ends in her being pushed out of the way by Jacob who becomes seriously injured as a result of her bravado. Instead of achieving the desired respect, she earns a rebuke and invectives, being called ‘stupid’ and ‘cocky’ by Edward and ‘an idiot’ by Jacob. Both males denounce her actions as a foolish effort to ‘prove something,’ ‘prove she’s as tough as the rest of us.’ 24 Thus, her attempts to prove herself an equally good wolf as her male companions remain futile.

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__________________________________________________________________ 4. Conclusions The Twilight supernatural female protagonists, whether shape-shifters or vampires, can be inscribed into the same cultural age-long tradition which fosters the representation of the infertile woman as a witch, a cyborg or another mythological, monstrous and menacing creature. Childless women in the series, especially Rosalie and Leah, are repeatedly constructed as disruptive and dangerous (either to themselves or to others), and/or as bitter and unfulfilled. Occupying the liminal space between species and genders, between life and death, and possessing inhuman bodily properties, they are conceptualised within Bousfield’s and Kristeva’s models of abjection which ‘disturbs identity, system [...] does not respect borders, positions, rules.’ 25 Breaking the tribal paternal order and the taboo of female sexuality, Leah overflows traditionally delineated cultural and social boundaries, and thus represents ‘the in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.’ 26 Challenging the binary classification of male and female, she demonstrates ‘a lack of stable and unambiguous gender identity’ which is, as many scholars argue, the very essence of the construction of monstrosity. 27 Leah’s punishment for her transgressions (unwilling as they are) is her barrenness. Her fate is shared by the other female transgressors - vampire women. The denial of their right to approach any form of biological motherhood is reinforced by the very conceptualisation of immortal children as taboo punishable by death and by the disastrous consequences of females creating new vampires (like in the case of Victoria and Maria), as well as by inability of some to do so (like in the case of Rosalie and Emmett). Renesmee, Edward and Bella’s daughter, seems to be the only exception from this rule. According to the imprinting theory, as the subject of a wolf’s imprinting she has to be fertile. However, this exception can be explained by the fact that Renesmee is half-human from her mother’s side, as Bella gave birth to her before becoming a vampire, and thus she is endowed with human femininity. 28 By constructing the supernatural female protagonists as infertile, the Twilight series casts fertility as the defining feature of human womanhood. This notion is easily discernible in Rosalie identifying the loss of her humanity with the loss of her reproductive capacities, and reaffirmed by Leah and Esme. The former hopes to regain her fertility along with full humanity upon the termination of her shapeshifting abilities; the latter has ended her human life upon the loss of her child. Remarkably, the notions of race and class are just as irrelevant within this discourse as the notion of species. Rosalie, an upper-class white vampire, and Leah, a Native American shape-shifter most likely coming from a humble background, are connected over the social, racial and economic boundaries as sterile monstrous females. In spite of them being ‘natural enemies’ and hostile towards each other, there is a certain, unanticipated understanding and connection between the two women as far as children are concerned. ‘I totally get her perspective,’ admits Leah while talking to Jacob about Rosalie’s attitude to Bella’s

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__________________________________________________________________ life-threatening pregnancy. ‘I’d probably do the same as the bloodsucker.’ 29 Thus, childlessness is depicted as an undesired state and a sorrow for all women, regardless of their origin or social position. Curiously, the notion of male reproductive problems is conspicuously absent from the series. Even though none of the childless male protagonists show any indication of longing for an offspring, they are still able to produce it. Nothing in the Twilight narrative suggests that the fertility of male shape-shifters might have been impaired by the activation of their tribal ‘wolf-gene.’ In fact, the whole construction of the imprinting theory implies the opposite. Similarly, as it ultimately appears in the last volume of the series, the reproductive capacities of the male vampires also remain unharmed. They are seemingly even more potent than regular males, able to impregnate human women - that is beings of a different species. In consequence, the childlessness of vampire couples proves to be entirely the female vampires’ ‘fault.’ As a result, the impossibility to produce offspring sets supernatural women apart not only from human women but also from supernatural men, placing infertility as the central attribute of monstrous femininity in Twilight.

Notes 1

Linda H. McGuire, ‘From Greek Myth to Medieval Witches: Infertile Women as Monstrous and Evil’, in Our Monstrous (S)kin: Blurring the Boundaries between Monsters and Humanity, ed. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn (Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009), 135-137 and 140-141. 2 Ibid., 135, 137 and 139-141. Cf. Glenda Shaw-Garlock, ‘Abject Cyborg Woman’, in Our Monstrous (S)kin: Blurring the Boundaries between Monsters and Humanity, ed. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn (Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009), 124. 3 Christine Bousfield, ‘The Abject Space: Its Gifts and Complaints’, Journal of Gender Studies 9, No. 3 (2000): 331; Cf. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 4. 4 McGuire, ‘From Greek Myth to Medieval Witches’, 144. 5 Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), 3. 6 Ibid.; McGuire, ‘From Greek Myth to Medieval Witches’, 135, 137 and 139-141; Bousfield, ‘The Abject Space,’ 331; Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 4. 7 Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (London: Atom, 2008), 446. 8 Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (London: Atom, 2010), 292. 9 Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (London: Atom, 2007), 265. 10 Meyer, Breaking Dawn, 292. 11 Cf. Danielle Dick McGeough, ‘Twilight and Transformations of Flesh: Reading the Body in Contemporary Youth Culture’, in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture,

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__________________________________________________________________ Media and the Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), 95. Cf also Kathryn Kane, ‘A Very Queer Refusal: The Chilling Effect of the Cullens’ Heteronormative Embrace’, in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media and the Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), 115. 12 Meyer, Breaking Dawn, 175. 13 Meyer, Eclipse, 137-138. 14 Meyer, Breaking Dawn, 291. 15 Meyer, Eclipse, 370-371. 16 Ibid., 553. 17 Stephenie Meyer, New Moon (London: Atom, 2007); Meyer, Twilight, 350. 18 Meyer, Breaking Dawn, 265. 19 Ibid., 322. 20 Ibid., 290. 21 Ibid., 291. 22 Magdalena Środa, ‘Polskie Tabu, czyli o Czym się Nie Rozmawia’, Wprost 32 (8-14 August 2011): 23. 23 Bousfield, ‘The Abject Space’, 331. 24 Meyer, Eclipse, 500 and 525. 25 Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 4. 26 Ibid. 27 Shaw-Garlock, ‘Abject Cyborg Woman’, 124. Cf. M. Soraya García-Sánchez, ‘Cross-Dressing, a Monstrous Success: The Lieutenant Nun’, in Our Monstrous (S)kin: Blurring the Boundaries between Monsters and Humanity, ed. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn (Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009). 28 Meyer, Breaking Dawn, 320-331. 29 Ibid., 290 and 292-293.

Bibliography Bousfield, Christine, ‘The Abject Space: Its Gifts and Complaints’. Journal of Gender Studies 9, No. 3 (2000): 329–346. Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York and London: Routledge, 1993. García-Sánchez, M. Soraya. ‘Cross-Dressing, a Monstrous Success: The Lieutenant Nun’. In Our Monstrous (S)kin: Blurring the Boundaries between

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__________________________________________________________________ Monsters and Humanity, edited by Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, 153–171. Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009. Kane, Kathryn. ‘A Very Queer Refusal: The Chilling Effect of the Cullens’ Heteronormative Embrace’. In Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media and the Vampire Franchise, edited by Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz, 103–118. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. McGeough, Danielle Dick. ‘Twilight and Transformations of Flesh: Reading the Body in Contemporary Youth Culture’. In Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media and the Vampire Franchise, edited by Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz, 87–102. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010. McGuire, Linda H. ‘From Greek Myth to Medieval Witches: Infertile Women as Monstrous and Evil’. In Our Monstrous (S)kin: Blurring the Boundaries between Monsters and Humanity, edited by Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, 135–151. Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009. Meyer, Stephenie. New Moon. London: Atom, 2007. —––. Twilight. London: Atom, 2007. —––. Eclipse. London: Atom, 2008. —––. Breaking Dawn. London: Atom, 2010. Shaw-Garlock, Glenda. ‘Abject Cyborg Woman’. In Our Monstrous (S)kin: Blurring the Boundaries between Monsters and Humanity, edited by Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, 115–134. Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009. Środa, Magdalena. ‘Polskie Tabu, czyli o Czym się Nie Rozmawia’. Wprost 32 (814 August 2011): 23–28. Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, PhD, currently working at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

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__________________________________________________________________ Her academic interests comprise gender studies, identity construction, youth culture, Swedish immigration to the USA, ethnic literature and press for children.

Part 5 Performing the Monster: Masks and Personas

Erik’s Effects: The Phantom, the Gesamtkunstwerk and the Monstrosity of Spectacle Ivan Phillips Abstract Virginia Woolf famously dated the origins of the modern sensibility to December 1910. This chapter, using the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk or ‘total work of art’ as its theoretical starting point, argues that Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, published in the same year, represents a distinct product of this sensibility. Enacting a compelling narrative of ‘monstrous’ unsettlement within mass culture, the novel is one of the iconic monster fictions of the twentieth century, although it continues to be critically neglected compared to similar literary horror classics. The Opera Ghost, Erik, a grotesque social outcast, is a special effects artist on a grand scale, a fairground magician and inspired architect as well as a torturer, assassin and psychotic obsessive. Beneath the Palais Garnier he creates a world of trapdoors, pulleys and costumes, of smoke and mirrors, of flame effects and water, creating a Gesamtkunstwerk within a Gesamtkunstwerk. His legacy is a troubled, prophetic and inexhaustible allegory of emergent modernity, in particular of mass media spectacle and shared popular fantasy. As charismatic as he is terrifying, as tragic as he is cruel, this beast in search of beauty seems to embody both the fear and the fascination of a complex mediated environment. Ultimately, the spaces he inhabits offer singular perspectives from which to explore the cultural conditions of the last hundred years. Key Words: Gothic, monstrosity, media, interface, Gesamtkunstwerk, Leroux, Lessing, laocoönism, spectacle, modernity. ***** This is a kind of ghost story, tracing the spectre of a familiar, perhaps too familiar, modern myth through the echoing architecture of an idea. The story begins in 1910, a year in which three things happened that might be seen as establishing the critical coordinates for this chapter. Irving Babbitt published The New Laokoön: An Essay on the Confusion of the Arts, Gaston Leroux published Le Fantôme de l’Opéra and, according to Virginia Woolf’s famous analysis, ‘human character changed.’ 1 In other words, the earliest of several important and influential twentieth century polemics against the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk or ‘total work of art’ coincided with one possible start date for European cultural Modernism and the appearance of one of the most powerful Gothic mythologies of the last century. Babbitt’s book was written in reaction to the particular kind of Romanticism embodied, not unambiguously, in the ideal of unified creation championed most

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__________________________________________________________________ famously by the composer Richard Wagner in two essays of 1849, ‘Art and Revolution’ and ‘The Art-Work of the Future.’ 2 The Gesamtkunstwerk is a dream (or, depending on your viewpoint, a nightmare) of artistic fusion which sets itself against the alternative principle of medium specificity articulated by G. E. Lessing in his work of 1766, Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. 3 In one vision, the arts cohere in an expression of utopian cultural coherence and creative contiguity, in the other they are delimited by the pure and precise requirements of their distinct natures. For many, the archetypal Gesamtkunstwerk is Wagner’s own opera house at Bayreuth, with its double proscenium and sunken orchestra, placing emphasis on illusions of space, presence, extreme mood lighting and sheer acoustic magnitude. Antecedents for this are the great medieval cathedrals of Europe, architectural mergings of work in stone, glass, metal, paint and sound. The idea can also be traced within the phantasmagorical spectacles of Paul Philidor and Étienne-Gaspard Robert in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, stage-crafted, often site-specific orchestrations of paint-work, model-work and glass-work, visual and sonic projection, live performance and live effects in smoke, flame and water. Today, we would look no further than fairground rides at Alton Towers, Thorpe Park and elsewhere, or the theme parks of Disney, The Making of Harry Potter, the Doctor Who Experience and so on. It is easy to forget that Wagner’s notion of the total work of art has its origins in a revolutionary utopianism which, as Sven Lütticken has written, ‘aimed not only at uniting the arts, but also at integrating art and society once again,’ reviving the sense, embodied in those medieval cathedrals, of ‘a place where individual people became an organic whole of believers.’ 4 The social idealism of this is eroded by Wagner’s notorious anti-Semitism and by his reputation as the composer of choice for Nazism. It is further worn away by more recent scepticism about the ‘commercial gesamtkunstwerk’ 5 and the broader social effects of complex immersive spectacle on audiences. The ideological shadow cast over the concept of the total work of art has been captured well by Juliet Koss: Loosely associated with synaesthesia, phantasmagoria, and psychedelia, the term Gesamtkunstwerk often stands for an artistic environment or performance in which spectators are expertly maneuvered into dumbfounded passivity by a sinister and powerful creative force. It is often mistaken for a hazy mixture of art forms that intoxicates those who gather in its presence, encouraging the kind of passive aesthetic response also ascribed to the spectacle culture famously articulated by Guy Debord in 1968. 6 Seen as industrialised and manipulatively commercial (it ‘overwhelms the spectators’ emotions, impedes the possibility of critical thought, and moulds a

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__________________________________________________________________ group of individuals into a powerless mass’ 7 ) rather than spiritually edifying and socially cohesive, the Gesamtkunstwerk has become seriously tainted as an ideal of the socially inclusive art form. So, after Babbitt come Rudolf Arnheim, Clement Greenberg, Nöel Carroll, Rosalind Krauss and others. 8 Most damagingly, the concept has been scarred by its embroilment in Theodor Adorno’s analysis of the ‘relapse into barbarism’ leading up to the Second World War and by its apparent manifestation of a romantically sensationalist anti-Modernism. 9 However, the last twenty years has seen a revision of critical opinion in relation to experiences of immersive, hybrid and collective mass media. Lev Manovich has not been alone in proclaiming the beginning of the ‘post-media age,’ an age in which ‘[v]arious cultural and technological developments have together rendered meaningless one of the key concepts of modern art - that of a medium.’ 10 After all, most people now carry a kind of miniature Gesamtkunstwerk about their person in the form of a smartphone, tablet computer and/or laptop and, as Douglas Kellner has commented, ‘spectacle itself is becoming one of the organizing principles of the economy, polity, society, and everyday life.’ 11 The aim of this chapter is to assert that Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, translated into English within a year of its initial publication, constitutes a powerful and complex reading of the concept of the total work of art at a time of immense cultural change and uncertainty. In the character of Erik, the Opera Ghost, Leroux created one of the great mythic figures of modernity. This spectral, deathly, obsessed and twisted genius, whispering to the young singer Christine Daaë in the shadows of the Paris Opera House, is a deeply troubling character in his elusiveness, in his threat, in his tragedy, in his charisma, but perhaps most of all in his brilliance. Erik the Phantom is, whatever else he might be, a special effects artist par excellence. Five storeys beneath the Palais Garnier, he has created his own spectacular and deadly theme park comprising trap-doors, mirrors, flame effects, water features, shock tactics, torture chambers and a suburban house on a lake. In the foundations of a great public building exemplifying the spectacular mutuality of the nineteenth century architecture, interior design, music, stonework, lighting, sculpture, painting, he has created a secret kingdom of fantasy. He has created a Gesamtkunstwerk within a Gesamtkunstwerk. Born near Rouen, the son of a master mason, Erik is rejected as a child because of his great ugliness. Fleeing home, he finds himself travelling Europe and the Middle East from fair to fair, originally as part of a freak-show, displayed in ‘all his hideous glory,’ but gradually developing into a renowned singer, a conjuror, a ventriloquist, a special effects practitioner, ‘complet[ing] his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountainhead of art and magic, among the gypsies.’ 12 He is taken into the employ of the Persian Shah at Mazenderan, creating distractions for the bored sultana and a dwelling through which her paranoid father is able to move unseen: ‘Erik had very original ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as a conjuror contrives a trick

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__________________________________________________________________ casket.’ 13 He later transfers his skills to the Sultan of Constantinople, constructing the trap-doors, secret chambers and strong-boxes of his palace at Yildiz-Kiosk. His technical ingenuity extends to engineering decoys for the imperilled ruler: He also invented those automata, dressed like the Sultan and resembling the Sultan in all respects, which made people believe that the Commander of the Faithful was awake at one place when, in reality, he was asleep elsewhere. 14 Both the Shah and, it is implied, the Sultan use Erik’s ‘diabolical inventive powers’ to ‘calmly’ carry out ‘political assassinations,’ and we are told that he is ‘guilty of not a few horrors, for he seem[s] not to know the difference between good and evil.’ 15 This amoralism is profoundly emblematic of the phantom’s character. He is a man whose inventiveness enables him to both kill without scruple and to simulate life with an uncanny verisimilitude. The nature of Erik’s ugliness is significant here. In many adaptations of Leroux’s story, his deformity is explained as the result of a tragic accident, usually fire or acid, but in the original novel and in the earliest film version it is clear that Erik is born as a horror. More specifically, he is born dead. In his early days in the travelling fairs and circuses he is exhibited as a ‘living corpse,’ 16 and in the famous unmasking scene it is as dead thing that he memorably characterises himself to Christine: “Your hands! Your hands! Give me your hands!” And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful face. He tore his flesh with my nails, tore his terrible dead flesh with my nails!... “Know,” he shouted, while his throat throbbed and panted like a furnace, “know that I am built up of death from head to foot and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!” 17 Yet Erik defies death at the same time as embodying and enacting it. Knowing too much, he is targeted for assassination by both the Shah and the Sultan. On each occasion he escapes, the first time with the help of the Persian daroga, being substituted by a rotted, half-eaten cadaver washed up on a beach and dressed in his clothes. The narrative never reveals how he survives the Sultan but it is almost as if, being death itself, he is incapable of dying. Not surprisingly, perhaps, he is revealed to sleep in a coffin. Following his escape from the Sultan, Erik takes cover in plain commercial building work, ‘becom[ing] a contractor like any other contractor, building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks.’ 18 It is in this role that he becomes involved in the groundwork for the Palais Garnier:

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__________________________________________________________________ When he found himself in the cellars of the enormous playhouse, his artistic, fantastic, wizard nature resumed the upper hand. Besides, was he not as ugly as ever? He dreamed of creating for his own use a dwelling unknown to the rest of the earth, where he could hide from man’s eyes for all time. 19 When Christine first visits Erik’s underground lair, she notes that, although the heart of his dwelling is ‘a drawing-room quite as commonplace as any,’ it has one striking peculiarity: ‘[T]here was no mirror in the whole apartment.’ 20 Given the phantom’s grotesque appearance, this absence perhaps seems natural enough, but also suggests an interesting link between his condition and that of the vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Where the phantom avoids mirrors because (presumably) he does not want to see his reflection, the Count avoids them because he has no reflection. 21 Yet mirrors are a vital part of the thematic apparatus of Leroux’s novel, most especially in the episode which sees the daroga and the Vicomte de Chagny trapped in the hexagonal torture chamber within Erik’s apartment. This room, lined with mirrors, is based on an earlier version built as a ‘palace of illusion’ 22 for the sultana, but subsequently developed into a space of torment and execution. It is electrically lit and capable of being heated to intolerable temperatures. Effectively, it is a diorama that manufactures slow death by simulated desert heat. A ‘great mirror’ is also, of course, the station at which Christine hears the educating voice of the Angel of Music in her dressing-room, a point of exit and entrance for the Angel’s alter ego, Erik the Opera Ghost. 23 Mirrors are interfaces. They are sites where one thing meets another, or seems to meet another, sites of translation and feedback, where x is able to feel the presence of y and, more importantly, enjoy the illusion of contact with y, or even of becoming y. This is suggestive in relation to Erik because his enigma as a character seems to be predicated on his distinctive relationship with interfacial points. Again sharing something of the liminal ontology of the vampire, he is a creature of ambivalence, a haunter of thresholds and dweller on the margins, impatient of windows and doors, effectively invisible to mirrors but found wherever connection is implied. Erik is the voice from behind Christine’s mirror, the red ink on the letters sent to the Opera House managers, the unseen presence in the room, on the stairs, on the rooftop, the life in death and death in life. Perhaps most powerfully his own personal interface, his skin, is a locus of manifest ambiguity. He wears a mask, both an extension (in McLuhanesque terms) of his own face and a concealment of it. 24 The mask resembles a skull and the face beneath the mask resembles a mask that resembles a skull. After the unmasking, Erik asserts this paradox to the horrified Christine: Then he hissed at me, “Ah, I frighten you, do I?... I dare say!... Perhaps you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this…

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__________________________________________________________________ this… my head is a mask? Well,” he roared, “tear it off as you did the other!” 25 As Jerrold E. Hogle notes, in his study The Undergrounds of the Phantom of the Opera, this is an ambiguity that is lessened or erased in almost all of the adaptations of Leroux’s novel. 26 Even so, it is an ambiguity which hints at the power of this myth to offer both a critique and a celebration of the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk. As the demon at the heart of opera house, half-seen, ever-present, never-quitethere, Erik most obviously tempts towards an endorsement of negative readings of the total work of art. Death haunts the opera house literally and perhaps most emblematically in the moment when Erik sends the chandelier crashing down onto the audience, and in the disrupted locus of this great cultural wonderwork, the Palais Garnier, this might be seen as a metaphorical haunting of modernity itself. Gaston Leroux, we should remember, had made his living as a distinctly twentieth century journalist before turning to fiction, writing reports, for instance, from the Russian Revolution of 1905. Newspaper reports are an important part of the narrative fabric of The Phantom of the Opera and perhaps it is not surprising that in this, four years before the mechanised carnage of the First World War, it is possible to identify the spectre at the gathering feast of modern mass mediated culture. Stated plainly, does Erik the Phantom represent a deathly terror of the emerging modern world? Unsettlement is a key idea here, and it can be related closely to the changing nature of the media interface. In particular, it can be observed that all media, when new, seem to undergo a period of unsettlement or radical instability, which is typified by formal self-consciousness and experimentation. The early years of the printing press, of the novel, of photography, of cinema, of the computer, all provide evidence of this. An initial period of creative openness and cultural uncertainty is followed by absorption into a ‘mythic’ (in the Barthesian sense of the word) world-view, characterised by more settled and comfortable processes of narration, representation, reception. 27 Once a medium has been culturally assimilated, the restless energies of its inception are diverted into marginal practices which nevertheless inform and, at times of major political or cultural change, challenge the mainstream. One of the persistent myths of modernity is that the media of the past (unlike those of the present) were always stable, settled, known, welcomed, understood. Erik, constantly embodying resistance at the interfaces of the opera house, conveys an awareness that this state of settled grace was never the case. He is, after all, a profoundly unsettled creature. Clearly, he is a frightening figure, but he is also a sympathetic one. That is why, as with Frankenstein’s Creature, as with Jekyll and Hyde, as with Dracula, his myth has endured. In Leroux’s novel the Persian describes Erik as ‘a real monster’ but insists that he is

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__________________________________________________________________ also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited and there is nothing he loves so much as, after astonishing people, to prove the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind. 28 It is through his childlike innocence and capacity to astonish in ingenious ways that the Phantom of the Opera has found a permanent place in cultural consciousness. In this way, he can be seen as not only registering the apprehension and shock of the new, but also its excitement, its variety and its tantalising unpredictability.

Notes 1

Virginia Woolf, ‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown’, Collected Essays, I (London: Hogarth Press, 1966), 320; Irving Babbitt, The New Laokoon: An Essay on the Confusion of the Arts (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910); Gaston Leroux, Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (Paris: Pierre Lafitte, 1910). The first, and until 1990 the only English translation was by Alexander Teixiera de Mattos (London: Mills and Boon, 1911). 2 For exploration of Wagner and the Gesamtkunstwerk, see Matthew Wilson Smith, The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace (London: Routledge, 2007). 3 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocöon, or The Limits of Painting and Poetry (London: Dent, 1930). 4 Sven Lütticken, ‘Undead Media’, Afterimage 31, No. 4 (January-February 2004): 12. 5 Ibid. 6 Juliet Koss, ‘The Myth of the Gesamtkunstwerk: Approaching Wagner’s Dumbfounding Impact on Modernity’, Der Tagesspiegel, September 14, 2008, accessed October 12, 2012, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/zeitung/the-myth-of-thegesamtkunstwerk/1323622.html, 2. 7 Ibid., 1. 8 Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (London: University of California Press, 1957), 199-230; Clement Greenberg, ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon’, Partisan Review 7 (July-August, 1940): 299-301; Rosalind Krauss, ‘A Voyage on the North Sea’: Art in the Age of the Post-Media Condition (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000); Nöel Carroll, ‘The Specificity of Media in the Arts’, The Journal of Aesthetic Education 19, No. 4 (Winter 1985): 5-20. 9 Theodor W. Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (Chichester and New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 191. 10 Lev Manovich, ‘Post-Media Aesthetics’, Manovich.net (2001), accessed October 12, 2012, http://manovich.net/articles/. Cf. Lütticken, ‘Undead Media’, 12-13.

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__________________________________________________________________ 11

Douglas Kellner, ‘Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle,’ Razón y Palabra 39 (April-May 2004), accessed October 12, 2012, http://www.www.razonypalabra.org.mx/anteriores/n39/dkelner.html. 12 Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, trans. Alexander Teixiera de Mattos (London: Wordsworth, 2008), 190. This is the truncated translation of 1910, which I have decided to use as it remains by far the best-known version of Leroux’s novel in English. The centenary translation by Mireille Ribière is highly recommended, however, and presents the text in full (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2009). 13 Leroux, Phantom of the Opera, 190. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 92. 18 Ibid.,191. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 87 and 90. 21 Bram Stoker, Dracula (London: Arrow, 1971), 26 and 33. For further discussion of the mirror trope in vampire mythology, see Ivan Phillips, ‘The Vampire in the Machine: Exploring the Undead Interface,’ and Sam George, ‘“He Make in the Mirror No Reflect”: Undead Aesthetics and Mechanical Reproduction: Dorian Gray, Dracula, and David Reed’s “Vampire Painting”’, in Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the Present, eds. Sam George and Bill Hughes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 290-316 and 66-101. 22 Leroux, Phantom of the Opera, 165. 23 Ibid., 69 and 108. 24 In Marshall McLuhan’s axiom ‘the medium is the message,’ the medium is anything that extends the human, and its message is its social impact or effect rather than its informational content. See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 7. 25 Leroux, Phantom of the Opera, 92. 26 Jerrold E. Hogle, The Undergrounds of the Phantom of the Opera: Sublimation and the Gothic in Leroux’s Novel and its Progeny (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 6. 27 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Paladin, 1972). According to Barthes, ‘the very principle of myth’ is that ‘it transforms history into nature’: ‘it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences’, Barthes, Mythologies, 140 and 150. 28 Leroux, Phantom of the Opera, 146.

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Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Translated by Henry W. Pickford. Chichester and New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Arnheim, Rudolf. Film as Art. London: University of California Press, 1957. Babbitt, Irving. The New Laokoön: An Essay on the Confusion of the Arts. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Paladin, 1972. Botting, Fred. Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996. Carroll, Nöel. ‘The Specificity of Media in the Arts’. The Journal of Aesthetic Education 19, No. 4 (Winter 1985): 5–20. George, Sam, and Bill Hughes, eds. Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the Present. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. Greenberg, Clement. ‘Towards a Newer Laocoön’. Partisan Review 7 (July-August 1940): 299–2301. Hogle, Jerrold E. The Undergrounds of the Phantom of the Opera: Sublimation and the Gothic in Leroux’s Novel and its Progeny. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Methuen, 1981. Kellner, Douglas. ‘Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle’. Razón y Palabra 39 (April-May 2004). Accessed October 12, 2012. http://www.www.razonypalabra.org.mx/anteriores/n39/dkelner.html. Koss, Juliet. ‘The Myth of the Gesamtkunstwerk: Approaching Wagner’s Dumbfounding Impact on Modernity’. Der Tagesspiegel, September 14, 2008. Accessed October 12, 2012. http://www.tagesspiegel.de/zeitung/the-myth-of-thegesamtkunstwerk/1323622.html.

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__________________________________________________________________ Krauss, Rosalind. ‘A Voyage on the North Sea’: Art in the Age of the Post-Media Condition. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000. Leroux, Gaston. Le Fantôme de l’Opéra. Paris: Pierre Lafitte, 1910. —––. The Phantom of the Opera. London: Wordsworth, 2008. —––. The Phantom of the Opera. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2009. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocöon, or The Limits of Painting and Poetry. London: Dent, 1930. Lütticken, Sven. ‘Undead Media’. Afterimage 31, No. 4 (January-February 2004): 12–13. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. Manovich, Lev. ‘Post-Media Aesthetics’. Manovich.net (2001). Accessed October 12, 2012. http://manovich.net/articles/. Smith, Matthew Wilson. The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace. London: Routledge, 2007. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London: Arrow, 1971. Wagner, Richard. Prose Works: Vol. 1. London: Kessinger, 2007. Woolf, Virginia. Collected Essays I. London: Hogarth Press, 1966. Ivan Phillips is Associate Dean of School (Learning and Teaching) in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. He is currently contemplating the links between technology, poetry and the Gothic and is also pondering a new theory of media which he intends to call ‘unsettlement.’

The Dark Defender: Dexter and Making Heroes out of Serial Killers Joanna Ioannidou Abstract Although we do not typically make heroes out of serial killers, as Paul Kooistra has argued, Dexter manages to have us supporting the monster. The eponymous protagonist of this television show is a forensic blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police by day and a serial killer by night. Even though one would expect audiences to read the main character as antipathetic because of his monstrous tendencies, a positive reading of Dexter is possible. In fact, as this chapter argues, the protagonist is sympathetic 1 not despite his monstrous traits, but because of them. Viewing Dexter through such a lens is made possible by a series of elements in his character’s construction, his choice of victims being the quintessence of his acceptance by audiences. By targeting murderers who have escaped punishment, Dexter is transformed from a typical serial killer into an enforcer of justice. As a result, his need to kill is no longer the irrational urge of a psychopath, but can be seen as a heroic action ridding the world of evil. This chapter explores Dexter’s elevation to (vigilante) hero status, arguing that the protagonist’s killings are presented as acceptable and even desirable by responding to anxieties regarding un-punishment and fantasies of moral accountability. It also discusses Dexter’s main ‘opponents’ and their role in presenting his character as a new type of superhero. Finally, the chapter aims to raise questions regarding the significance of a ‘new order of heroes’ that manifest our ideas of ‘natural justice,’ and the role of these dark heroes in the blurring of boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, the humane and the inhumane. Key Words: Dexter, vigilantism, anti-heroes, justice, moral accountability, human monsters, television. ***** Never before has a serial killer been so accepted in society. Dexter Morgan, the protagonist of the eponymous HBO series, has us supporting him, even when we recoil in horror from his actions. The Miami Metro Police Department blood spatter analyst, who spends his nights engaging in violent, ritualistic murders, is not a typical monster. Although his murderous nature should be appalling - and there are both viewers and critics who reject the show because they are disturbed by its violence - Dexter mostly invites feelings of sympathy instead of contempt. Looking at the character’s construction, one can clearly see that the show uses a series of elements to transform its protagonist from a psychopath, who claims to feel no remorse, to a relatable brother/husband/father figure. 2 This strategy largely

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__________________________________________________________________ focuses on Dexter’s choice of victims. Targeting those who have escaped traditional justice, Dexter becomes a protector, whose actions can even be read as heroic. Tracing the character’s transformation from a self-proclaimed monster to a (vigilante) hero, this chapter explores the ways Dexter’s victims and adversaries allow for his actions to be deemed acceptable and even desirable. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the significance of dark heroes that test our moral boundaries, and raises questions regarding their role in defining the borders between humanity, inhumanity and monstrosity. In the series Dexter is almost immediately revealed as a serial killer and he never tries to make any excuses for his behaviour. In fact, in his voice-overs he tends to refer to himself as a monster. Even at times when his actions reveal his humanity, the protagonist continuously advocates for his own monstrosity. Perhaps the audience would see him as a monster too if he were not so careful choosing his victims. 3 Dexter openly admits to taking lives to please his Dark Passenger; still, he channels these urges towards other killers who have managed to avoid formal punishment. He abides by a code set up by his foster father Harry, a police officer. This set of principles guides, controls and restricts Dexter’s actions. By stressing the fact that the protagonist does not kill at random, his victims not being innocent law-abiding members of the community but murderous outlaws, Dexter’s character is related to a long line of anti-heroes in film (where Dirty Harry and Avenger, for instance, centre on characters that bend the rules in order to ensure that justice is served) and television (where the leading characters of shows, such as Dark Justice and Knight Rider, enforce their own kind of justice). This association aims to imply that Dexter’s dark urges are being used ‘for good,’ and thus portray his character more as a vigilante and less as a serial killer. Vigilantism responds to the anxiety sparked off by the fear of rising levels of violence combined with a disbelief in the power and efficiency of the justice system. Vigilantes aim to control crime or other social infractions by offering assurances of security through violently punishing those who escape the law. Although it is an illegitimate activity, as private individuals engage in establishing order, vigilantism is rationalised by anxieties regarding un-punishment and the fear that the criminal justice system is either non-existent or insufficient. The idea of someone taking the law in their own hands seems less irrational when police forces and the legal system are considered inadequate. Utilising the audience’s need for moral accountability and their mistrust in the ethical adequacy of legitimate governance, Dexter’s crimes can be rationally justified. In other words, in a society that wishes for justice to be served, but is dissatisfied by the efficiency of the justice system, Dexter’s actions, targeting those who have gone unpunished, seem more acceptable or even welcome. In Douglas Howard’s words: ‘[Dexter’s] murders come off as a kind of public service, a

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__________________________________________________________________ bizarre, psychopathic waste management of society, if you will.’ 4 Thus, by presenting Dexter’s killings as a way of enforcing justice, his character is transformed from an un-relatable serial killer to a protector. Furthermore, the feeling of injustice, which results from the fact that Dexter’s victims have committed crimes without facing the consequences of their actions, evokes the need for catharsis. 5 Even if one does not agree with people taking justice into their own hands in a real world setting, within a fictional universe the majority of the audience will wish for villains to be punished (by any means necessary). The punishment restores the balance of good and evil, thus allowing the audience to experience a feeling of catharsis. The struggle between light and dark can be found at the core of numerous narratives both ancient and modern. According to Carl Jung, the relationship between the hero and the shadow archetypes forms the foundation in all these stories, where a similar pattern can be traced - the protagonist fights to overcome the dark forces and restore justice. 6 Similarly, in Dexter, as the eponymous character is presented as a vigilante and not an irrational serial killer (whose killings only offer satisfaction to his dark urges), his actions can be read as cathartic. In other words, Dexter can be seen as restoring the balance between good and evil, thus becoming the story’s hero. And since every hero needs a villain, Dexter’s adversaries play a big role in his portrait as a vigilante. Every season features a main antagonist, who becomes Dexter’s focal point. The Ice Truck Killer, Lila Tournay, Miguel Prado, the Trinity Killer, the Barrel Girl murderers, The Doomsday Killers; all these characters are portrayed as irrational, unjustified and malevolent, aiming to create a clean-cut contradiction between them and Dexter. According to Murray Smith, when engaging with a fictional narrative, audiences tend to judge characters in relation to the situations these characters experience, and in comparison to other characters in the narrative. 7 Therefore, Dexter’s assessment does not rely as heavily on a universal set of standards that can also be applied to real life situations. He is largely judged in relation to the events and characters of the fictional world he inhabits. Consequently, as these villains are presented as almost exact opposites of the main protagonist, his character appears more sympathetic in comparison. In contrast to Dexter’s murders, the criminal acts committed by his main adversaries have no re-deeming qualities. They are depicted as killers of innocents, and there is no way for their actions to be read as anything other than acts driven by the need for the satisfaction of a sadistic desire. This encourages viewers to be sympathetic towards Dexter, since highlighting the violence these troubled characters are capable of makes his own actions appear almost benign. As Dexter himself says in season five: Despite having considered myself a monster for as long as I can remember, it still comes as a shock when I am confronted with the depth of evil that exists in this world. 8

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__________________________________________________________________ Not only do Dexter’s actions offer a sense of satisfaction that comes from seeing the culprits punished or justice served, but they also diminish the audience’s guilt of siding with the protagonist portrayed as the lesser of two evils. Therefore, by lessening the effect of Dexter’s murderous impulses through comparing him with more malevolent characters and associating his killings with restoring justice, Dexter ensures that the series leading man will not be perceived as the frightening, destructive monster he claims to be. Although we do not typically make heroes out of serial killers, as Paul Kooistra has argued, in Dexter’s case we side with the monster, and hope that he evades capture to continue hunting in the streets of Miami night after night. 9 Dexter tests our moral boundaries by being both a protector of innocents and a serial killer in need of taking lives in order to calm his Dark Passenger. On the one hand, we want to embrace him as the hero who helps restore the balance of good and evil; on the other - we feel the need to condemn his actions as unlawful. Consequently, watching Dexter choose yet another victim, our need for seeing the guilty punished collides with our obligation to obey the law. Dexter and other narratives that deal with issues of ‘natural justice’ reflect some general truths about the human condition and our need for seeing judgement passed that seem to run deeper than our devotion to the traditional order. Responding to anxieties regarding un-punishment and our desperate need for moral accountability, Dexter makes us rethink our sacred codes and forces us to wonder how far we would go to see justice served. ‘Way to take out the trash!’ - a fan cheers during a fantasy sequence in the final episode of season one, 10 and even though few of us would ever truly be able to adopt Dexter’s philosophy, we cannot help but (at least partly) justify his sense of justice. The part of us that mistrusts the ethical adequacy and the effectiveness of the judicial system seems capable of understanding Dexter’s warped sense of values. The majority of the audience would not go so far as to take the law into their own hands, but the ever-growing list of films and television shows whose central characters enforce their own type of justice indicates the strength of our need for seeing the guilty punished. Additionally, Dexter invites us to ponder over how thin the line between human and monster actually is. Dexter is neither a sociopath, unable of human connections, nor someone who does not fit into society. He holds a white-collar job, he has friends; he even has a family of his own. On the surface Dexter is nothing but ordinary. Still, he commits acts that could be classified as monstrous. He may confront, judge and condemn evil, but in a society that denounces the murder of another human being, Dexter is evil himself. However, as his monstrosity is internal rather than external and his actions can be partly justified as vigilantism, it is difficult to label Dexter as solely evil and condemn him as a monster. This dilemma renders us unable to maintain a clear distinction of the boundaries between human and monster, the humane and the inhumane. As Ashley Cocksworth states, ‘it would be tempting to identify evil as something that the

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__________________________________________________________________ demonic other does,’ 11 but Dexter’s ordinary nature does not allow us to do that. Watching the protagonist take yet another life and seeing someone that looks and acts human performing monstrous acts, we are forced to realise the close connection between humanity and monstrosity. Accordingly, clean-cut distinctions become almost impossible when actions that could be seen as humane (protecting future victims) are at the same time inhumane (murdering someone in cold blood). Dexter’s ambiguous nature blurs the boundaries of what we define as human, and reflects the notion of a potential monster being hidden in each and every one of us. Dexter is a unique case of a serial killer that becomes sympathetic not despite his monstrous traits but because of them. Channelling his murderous urges strictly in order to punish cruel outlaws, he is portrayed as a vigilante hero, instead of a mere sociopath who kills to satisfy his dark impulses. Touching upon our fears and concerns regarding the efficiency of the traditional justice system as well as our need for moral accountability, Dexter becomes a dark defender that brings our justice fantasies to life. Especially when confronted with his adversaries, who exemplify human behaviour at its most abominable, we cannot help but welcome his actions as a means of restoring the balance between good and evil. By siding with Dexter, however, we are forced to consider how far we are willing to push our moral boundaries in our quest for justice. Although most of us would not follow Dexter’s example and take the law into our own hands, it becomes increasingly difficult to simply reject the idea of vigilantism in a time when the faith in the justice system is decreasing. When we allow ourselves to root for dark heroes, the boundaries between humanity, inhumanity and monstrosity blur, and we cannot help but see how human the monsters can be.

Notes 1

Sympathy here is used to describe the emotional reaction to another’s situation, in which one comprehends the other person and his/her situation, and experiences (positive) feelings in response to that situation, without necessarily sharing the emotional state of that person. Amy Coplan, ‘Empathic Engagement with Narrative Fictions’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 145. 2 Joanna Ioannidou, ‘Sympathizing with a Serial Killer: The Case of Dexter’, in The Film and Media Reader 1. Proceedings of the FILM AND MEDIA 2011, 12-14 July 2011, The Institute of Education, University of London, London, ed. Phillip Drummond (London: The London Symposium, manuscript in editing). 3 There are a few cases when Dexter kills people who are not murderers, but the way these killings are presented as acceptable is not within the scope of this chapter.

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Douglas Howard, ‘Introduction: Killing Time with Showtime’s Dexter’, in Dexter: Investigating Cutting Edge Television, ed. Douglas Howard (London: New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), xiv. 5 Catharsis here is used in the Aristotelian sense to refer to a feeling of restoration, renewal and revitalisation (experienced by the audience or characters in the play) as the result of the release of pent-up emotions; Aristotle, Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1932), 1449b 21-28. 6 Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1964). 7 Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 62. 8 Scott Reynolds, ‘In the Beginning’, Dexter, season 5 episode 10, dir. Keith Gordon, aired November 28, 2010 (USA: Showtime Entertainment, 2011), DVD. 9 Paul Kooistra, Criminals as Heroes: Structure, Power and Identity (Bowling Green OH: Bowling Green S U Popular P, 1989), 21. 10 Daniel Cerone and Melissa Rosenberg, ‘Born Free’, Dexter, season 1 episode 12, dir. Michael Cuesta, aired December 17, 2006 (USA: Paramount Home Video, 2007), DVD. 11 Ashley Cocksworth, ‘The Dark Knight and the Evilness of Evil’, The Expository Times 120, No. 11 (2009): 543.

Bibliography Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23. Translated by W. Hamilton Fyfe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1932. Cocksworth, Ashley. ‘The Dark Knight and the Evilness of Evil’. The Expository Times 120, No. 11 (2009): 541–543. Coplan, Amy. ‘Empathic Engagement with Narrative Fictions’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 141–152. Howard, Douglas. ‘Introduction: Killing Time with Showtime’s Dexter’. In Dexter: Investigating Cutting Edge Television, edited by Douglas Howard, xii– xxiv. London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ioannidou, Joanna. ‘Sympathizing with a Serial Killer: The Case of Dexter’. In The Film and Media Reader 1. Proceedings of the FILM AND MEDIA 2011, 12-14 July 2011, The Institute of Education, University of London, London, edited by Phillip Drummond. London: The London Symposium (manuscript in editing). Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1964. Kooistra, Paul. Criminals as Heroes: Structure, Power and Identity. Bowling Green OH: Bowling Green S U Popular P, 1989. Smith, Murray. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

Filmography Dahl, John, Steve Shill, et al. Dexter. Season 1 to season 6. Jeff Lindsay, James Jr. Manos, et al. USA: Showtime Entertainment/Paramount Home Video, 2006-2011. DVD. Joanna Ioannidou is a graduate of Media and Performance Studies from Utrecht University. Her research, presented at various conferences in Europe and the U.S., largely focuses on monstrous narratives and their affect on audiences as well as emotional engagement with fictional characters.

A Bad Romance: Lady Gaga and the Return of the Divine Monster Lise Dilling-Hansen Abstract In the Middles Ages a monster was often considered a prodigy and a sign of the divine power of God, and it was not until the eighteenth century that the monster turned into a freak and was put on display to horrify and amuse audiences. Scholars from the field of disability studies have claimed that the understanding of the so-called freak as ‘abnormal’ is a socially constructed discourse, and suggested the less degrading term extraordinarity instead. This chapter adapts this theoretical approach and examines how the role of the monster has acquired new significations in modern societies. It claims that the monstrous body can actually be considered extraordinary rather than ‘disabled’ and wrong. Today this shift makes it possible for a pop star to be worshipped as a monster in mainstream pop culture. Based on Lady Gaga’s music video ‘Bad Romance,’ this chapter investigates how Gaga transgress dichotomies through her performances and establishes a new kind of bodily discourse in which monstrosity and beauty go hand in hand. By analysing the visual aesthetics in the video, I show how Gaga imitates and manages to stay recognisable in a heterosexual matrix and normative body discourses, while deconstructing them from the inside with her crippled spine, enormous eyes, spastic movements and the ‘rah rah ah-ah-ah’ monster sound. The thesis of this investigation is that Lady Gaga offers us a glimpse of a possible future where the monster is no longer tied to the freak show, where deviations from the normative beauty discourse is a prodigious plus, and where we are all invited to the Monster Ball. Key Words: Performativity, gender, discourse, post-humanity, extraordinarity. ***** 1. Case Presentation The singer Lady Gaga had a major breakthrough in 2008 when she released the single ‘Just Dance’ and quickly became visible on the music charts and in the media. A further five singles (‘Beautiful, Dirty, Rich,’ ‘Poker Face,’ ‘Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say),’ ‘Love Game’ and ‘Paparazzi’) were released from her first album, The Fame, and established Gaga as a hip and groundbreaking artist with daring visual expressions. But it was ‘Bad Romance,’ the first single from the next album, The Fame Monster, that once and for all integrated monstrosity as part of Gaga’s image. Besides ‘Paparazzi’ in which Gaga appeared as ‘crippled Gaga,’ ‘Bad Romance’ was the first video to show a physically deformed version of the artist. Lady Gaga thereby made it clear that her visual aesthetics differed from that

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__________________________________________________________________ of most music videos in modern pop culture, and that her goal was not to look as perfect as possible, contrary to such singers as Beyoncé, Shakira and Britney Spears. Instead, she challenged the categories of beauty and sexiness. In the beginning of the video ‘Bad Romance,’ light is cast on white coffins covered with red crosses and the word ‘Monster.’ The music starts and up come Gaga and her dancers. Hence, the question is not whether Gaga is a monster or not - but instead: 1) What kind of monster is she? and 2) What values are linked to the monster in ‘Bad Romance?’ During her Monster Ball Tour, the singer stated the following between the songs ‘Vanity’ and ‘The Fame:’ The best thing about The Monster Ball is that I created it so that my fans have a place to go. A place where all the freaks are outside and I lock the fucking doors. It doesn’t matter who you are … because tonight and every night after you could be whoever it is that you wanna be. 1 What is worth noticing here is the declaration that those who are not at this concert, who are not little monsters, are the freaks. As a result, being a monster is constituted as normal. The monstrous space Lady Gaga is creating for her fans is a room of possibilities. It is a room in which borders can be crossed and where fitting into the category of normalcy is what is really freaky. This chapter argues that the same pattern is repeated in the video ‘Bad Romance.’ Here, Gaga exemplifies how it is possible to deconstruct the categories of normalcy and turn what is usually considered ‘bad’ into positive and joyful deviations. 2. Theoretical Framework The theoretical approach of this chapter is social constructivist. It draws on the work of Judith Butler and the fundamental understanding of gender as being performative and repeated by citational practices that reiterate the heterosexual matrix - a hegemonic discursive model of gender. 2 In other words, gender and identity cannot be understood as containing a real ‘core,’ but instead are constructed through what people do and say. The works cited by Butler mostly revolve around sex and gender, but the terms are also relevant as analytical tools when working with other social constructions, such as the discursively constructed normative bodily representation in modern pop culture. In order to elaborate the discourse of the ‘normal’ body, this chapter will focus on two different marginalised aspects: 1) the disabled and 2) the monstrous body. 1) The field of disability studies will be represented by two scholars: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Tobin Siebers. They argue that being disabled in our society also means being worth less, deserving only of pity and wrong in general. 3 These negative associations linked to disabled persons are caused by discourses verbally

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__________________________________________________________________ constructed and repeated by society and by the way society is designed. In an effort to find vocabulary to talk about disabled people without being derogating, GarlandThomson suggests the word ‘extraordinary,’ instead of ‘disabled’ or ‘abnormal.’ 4 The bodily or mental features that deviate from the average or the majority can thus be understood as positive extras or at least as features that are not necessarily negative deviations. In short, what is central here is the detachment of divergences from normalcy from the ‘ab’ or ‘dis,’ and replacing them with ‘extra’ in order to think of them as possibilities. This theorisation of ‘extraordinarity’ will be applied to the understanding of the monstrous body in this chapter. 2) The approach to the monster adopted here understands this figure as something that disturbs our way of thinking rather than shocks and horrifies us. Jacques Derrida and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen both claim that the monstrous is hard to grasp and describe. 5 It is thus not necessarily a huge creature with hair all over its body, continuously drooling. It is something for which we have not established a category and therefore do not yet have a language. Consequently, the deconstructive point here is that a monster is monstrous because it can never really fit the already existing categories and at the same time because its very existence deconstructs the established ones. The monster would lose its monstrous status if it was compared to the norms, analysed and symbolically mastered. 6 It has to be understood as a deconstructive entity, ambiguous in form and, consequently, disruptive to our minds. Using these theoretical approaches, this chapter investigates how Lady Gaga breaks free from the normal structure of the human body by playing with the borders between animal/woman, machine/human, insane/sane and disabled/able, and thus becomes monstrous and abnormal, but still is recognisable as a sexy pop star in modern culture. The thesis of the chapter is that through her bodily performances, Gaga manages to detach the monster from the category of ‘bad’ and ‘marginalised,’ and prove that ‘extraordinarity’ can be an advantage. 3. The Ambiguous Gaga This chapter argues that several aspects of ‘Bad Romance’ qualify Gaga as a monster. When Gaga’s coffin opens, she sticks out her hands and makes spastic movements with her fingers. Then she licks her lip, bares her teeth, mimics a wild animal with a ‘rah rah’ sound and starts crawling out. When Gaga and her dancers rise from the coffins, they are dressed in white latex body suits with implants resembling the ribs of starved animals and a headgear covering their eyes. They move to the music in a rhythmical and somewhat coordinated way, but the movements are fast, edgy and sudden. What we encounter here is a creature that is close to - but not quite - human. It moves like an animal, it sounds like an animal, it acts like an animal (baring its teeth and licking its lips). It also looks like an animal with its animal ribs and invisible eyes. Considered ‘the windows to the soul,’ the latter can be perceived as one of the crucial bodily features of humanity;

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__________________________________________________________________ therefore, their invisibility reinforce the animalistic character of Gaga’s artistic performance. In the next scene of the video, Gaga’s eyes are visible, but are very enlarged and look like the eyes of a Disney princess or a plastic toy doll. She is looking straight into the camera with an empty, blank expression. The big-eyed Gaga is listening to the song (‘Bad Romance’) through earphones, and is either staggering around with robotic movements or lying in a bathtub singing along, or moving her hand spastically to the rhythm as if the music has taken over her body. Again, Gaga is difficult to define - is she a woman or a mechanical doll? Also the question arises of whether she is sane or insane. When the word ‘love’ is sung for the last time in the first verse, the big-eyed Gaga first points her hand like a gun and then rolls her eyes as if she has gone insane. In the following chorus, two nurses pull the singer out of the bathtub. Gaga tries to fight them but ends up being forced to drink a liquid. This implies either that the artist is being treated for insanity caused by a bad romance or that she is trying to fight the prison of normality constructed by society (represented by the nurses). Is Gaga then under the spell of love, or is she trying to break free from the heteronormative discourse of a woman in a romantic relationship? 4. Enjoying the Role as an Object of Lust In the second verse of the song, Gaga is guided into the role of an object by the nurses at the bath house, who display her in front of a semi-circle of men waiting to bid on her in an auction. Although the performer is being forced, she does not seem to resist. While dancing in front of the men, she sings such lines as ‘I want your horror, I want your design, cause you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine’ and ‘I want your psycho, your vertigo stick.’ 7 Gaga apparently wants everything from the male observer, and the situation is not only erotic for the men but also for Gaga, who is touching her own crotch - a very rare sight compared to the enormous number of music video scenes where a woman is being touched by a man. Also, taking a closer look at the video, it is easy to see that Gaga is not really forced to take her clothes off, neither is she thrown to the floor, even though it looks like it; she takes off her designer coat herself and later drops down on her knees and starts crawling towards one of the men repeating the ‘I want your love’ section of the song. Just before the men place their bid on the singer, she gives one of them a lap dance while saying ‘you know that I want you, cause I’m a free bitch, baby.’ 8 Lady Gaga is sold for one million dollars and then showed off as an unmovable body frozen in a rain of diamonds, trapped in silver planet rings and dressed in gold shoes and clothes in which it is impossible to wander freely. This way she becomes interwoven with material goods and ensnared as an object. The classical cinematic gaze is ‘largely a male [italics in the original] gaze, relying on Freud’s twin mechanisms of voyeurism and fetishism,’ in which the woman figures ‘as fetishized object, when the woman is given phallic attributes to

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__________________________________________________________________ lessen her threat’ or ‘as a woman that is degraded by a voyeuristic gaze, her body set up as mere object of sexual desire.’ 9 The body of Lady Gaga has become a commodity, comparable with diamonds, silver and gold, and buyable for money. Should we now feel sorry for the object Gaga has become? Certainly not! Modern feminists have claimed that women like Lady Gaga keep the female gender in an old-fashioned structure, despite the fact that she represents herself as a free woman. 10 They accuse her of not attempting to avoid participating in the object role constituted by the male (cinematic) gaze. I argue, though, that the singer evokes a new feminism in which it is possible to be an object and still be in control. Gaga is, indeed, the one in charge. She ends up killing the man who bought her, stating that although she is a sexy, female body full of desire, she is not an object to be had, and thus disrupts the phallic order. She is also the one pressing play at the beginning of the video, the one wearing the black crown and the one being a ‘free bitch.’ Here, Gaga deconstructs the category of woman as embodied desire as something degrading and wrong, and thus performs a female monster that transgresses the dichotomy of female and male sexuality in the heterosexual matrix. 5. Rethinking and Redoing the Abnormal Body In ‘Bad Romance’ Lady Gaga is the object being performed, but at the same time she is the subject enacting the embodied performances. Gaga both is and does the body. Amelia Jones argues in her book Body Art/Performing Subject that body art ‘provides the possibility [italics in the original] for radical engagements that can transform the way we think about meaning and subjectivity (both the artist’s and our own).’ 11 I claim that ‘Bad Romance’ can be seen as a work of body art, where Gaga is both the artist (the subject) and the work of art (the object). Because of this double-role, Gaga holds the power as a subject to use herself as an objectified tool to deconstruct and thereby change discourses of normalcy. The human visualised in ‘Bad Romance’ deviates from the norm (a crippled spine, enormous eyes, staggering gait, possible insanity, etc.) and is constructed as monstrous (because of the uncategorisable and ever changing appearance and deviant way of acting), but it is not represented as a victim. Instead, Gaga performs a powerful creature full of lust and vitality with a look worth at least one million dollars of desire. By ascribing positive values to the non-normative body, the singer is capable of both being recognised in and deconstructing the discourse of the normative physical appearance that lingers in most mainstream music videos. She performs a female physical expressions that normally would not be accepted in popular culture, and by this means exemplifies how the bodily features of abnormality and monstrosity can transgress the dichotomy of accepted and nonaccepted bodies, becoming positive, extraordinary deviations. Through her embodied performance of the monstrous, Lady Gaga states that the real fun

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__________________________________________________________________ belongs to the monsters and thereby challenges the viewer’s fixed category of (ab)normalcy. 6. Conclusion This chapter argues that we need to rethink the concepts of monster and monstrous when confronted with a phenomenon like Lady Gaga. The figure we are dealing with here is a monster because of its eternal shape-shifting and its deconstruction of the existing discourses normally performed and cited in mainstream music videos. Gaga destabilises the category of human nature by suggesting that humans might be closer to animals or machines than we like to think. She also questions the status of woman as an object of lust by hinting that being an object can actually be positive instead of degrading. Most importantly, Lady Gaga shows how it is possible to have a monstrous body and still be a desired, vital role model. This chapter argues that Gaga demonstrates a way to integrate monstrosity - in the shape of physical deformity, mental illness and deviating performances of the female gender - into an acceptable and desired bodily discourse in mainstream culture. By performing the non-normative marked as positive, Gaga manages to turn monstrous features into extraordinary ones which can make a woman a ‘free bitch,’ capable of breaking out of conventional structures. The monster enjoyed its prime in the freak show many years ago and now it is time to re-recognise it - not as a sign of the divine power of God, but as a sign of future possibilities, where norm-deviating bodies are taking control. Gaga has led the way and if we do not follow, we risk being the freaks standing outside the locked door.

Notes 1

Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden, dir. Laurieann Gibson (USA: Studio Polydor, 2011), DVD. 2 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 2006), 34 and 208; Judith Butler, ‘Introduction’, in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993), xxi-xxii. 3 Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 7; Tobin Siebers, Disability Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 17. 4 Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies, 9. 5 Jacques Derrida, Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994 (California: Stanford University Press, 1995), 385; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Preface’, in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), x.

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Derrida, Points..., 386. Lady Gaga, ‘Bad Romance’, dir. Francis Lawrence (Los Angeles: Interscope Records, 2009), 5:04, uploaded October 11, 2009, accessed December 26, 2012, http://www.ladygaga.com/media/default.aspx?meid=5404. 8 Ibid. 9 Ann E. Kaplan, Rocking around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 1987), 91. 10 Cathrine Redfern and Kristin Aune, Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2010), 171-173. 11 Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 14. 7

Bibliography Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge, 1993. —––. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. ‘Preface’. In Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, vii–xiii. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Derrida, Jacques. Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994. California: Stanford University Press, 1995. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Jones, Amelia. Body Art/Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Kaplan, E. Ann. Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge, 1987. Redfern, Cathrine, and Kristin Aune. Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement. London: Zed Books Ltd., 2010. Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.

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Filmography Lady Gaga. ‘Bad Romance’. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Los Angeles: Interscope Records, 2009. 5:05. Uploaded October 11, 2009. Accessed December 26, 2012. http://www.ladygaga.com/media/default.aspx?meid=5404. Gibson, Laurieann, dir. Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden. StudioPolydor, 2011. DVD. Lise Dilling-Hansen is a PhD student in the Department of the Aesthetics and Communication at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research explores the gender and bodily discourses performed by Lady Gaga, how Gaga’s fans imitate her, and how this is creating new discourses in modern culture.