Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

decisions on-behalf of the disabled. The idea of monstrosity correlatedwith projecting the disabled as other has more to do with power andcontrol in society. Because the disabled supposedly defy the categoryof normal, the disabled are forced to assume the seemingly scaryand dangerous category of monstrous other. The idea of monstrositywhen applied to the inferiority with which society treats, views, andclassifies the disabled as monstrous others predates history. However,the focus of this research is a demand for us to reconsider the liminalspace in which the disabled are forced to commit to the role of other“without adequately exploring alternatives” (Sadowski 15). Giventhat all bodies are monstrous, the inferiority with which the disabledare regarded as monstrous others is society’s attempt to project the“abnormal” characteristics within the self onto the other.Cohen, in his extensive work on the monsters implicationswithin cultures, has drawn upon the monster’s existence as thatwhich is “distant and distinct but originate[d] within” (7). Cohen’sassertion has two powerful implications for the argument of thisresearch. The argument suggests that the monster is a projection ofour thoughts, feelings and emotions. The monster is a part of ourbeings just as the monster is a part of the beings that we visualizeas monstrous others. And, thus all beings are monstrous. Cohen,along with several others, has demonstrated how the monster hascome to signify everything including—skin color, body size, andin particularly birth defects—which people cannot control. Tounderstand the monstrous other, it is necessary to characterizemonstrosity, which The Oxford English Dictionary defines as thatwhich is a “[deviation] from the natural or conventional order;unnatural, extraordinary” (def. 1a), or “of a person: strange inconduct or disposition” (def. 1b) and “abnormally formed; havinga gross congenital malformation” (def. 3a). Cohen also declares inhis analysis of monsters that the monstrous “are disturbing hybridswhose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them20 afternoons of alterity