Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous aform suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions”(6). While these definitions do not entirely characterize themonstrous others and pertinently the disabled, these definitionsare necessary for clarifying why monstrous others are disturbing tomost, and further emphasize the inability of disabled to be classifiedas normal. Cohen’s assertion of the monster as a phenomenon that“signifies something other than itself” implies that the monster’sexistence is an embodiment of culture. Cohen’s argument is notthe only argument to characterize monster’s existence, yet, it leadsone to understand how the monstrous races fit into the world. LiberMonstrorum 1 classifies and compiles the monsters and prodigiesof the early medieval European world that strike fear and terrorin humankind, and requires us to synthesize and critique themonstrous in all things that are related through binaries. In essence,some of the richly coherent binaries— normal and abnormal,inhuman and human, power and powerlessness and difference andsameness— are the birth of otherness, which some humans withintheir cultures project onto each other. The conceptualization of thedisabled, as abnormal, different, powerless and inhuman despitehaving human qualities and features as ourselves, is a projection themonsters within us. The binaries abnormal, difference, powerlessand inhuman help to project the monsters within us because we tryto assimilate and integrate according to the opposite of the binaries.The binaries are mutually exclusive and cannot occur at the sametime therefore, the struggle to move from one oppositional categoryto the other makes us become monstrous others.Therefore, I argue that these definitions of the monstrouscertainly do not fit the disabled corpus. However, if we contend thatthese definitions accurately characterize the disabled as monstrous,¹ Orchard, Andy. “Liber Monstrorum: A translation.” Pride and Prodigies. University ofToronto Press: Toronto, 1995. 254-317. Printsancia s. huffman 21