Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

then we must apply such characteristics to the self as well as thosepeople, whose alterations of their bodies become a disability thatmost people in society accept as normal. People with bodily piercings,tattoos and even those who have used plastic surgery to make theirlips, ears, and eyes more appealing are disabled because their bodieshave deviated from normal. The fact that we are all born with smalllimbs, small genitals, and glands that grow overtime to becomeovertly obvious means that we are all in the objectionable categoryof monstrous others. Cohen asserts that the monster is everythingthat it is and all that it is not therefore, the monster’s destructivenessis really a deconstructiveness that threatens to reveal that differencesoriginate in process, rather in fact (14). Cohen’s argument suggeststhat difference is not real, and that false difference is easily projectedonto the monstrous other. The projection of monstrosity onto eachother is largely based on human perception, which is provisionaland unstable. Thus anyone can become and everyone is a monstrousother. Margrit Shildrik offers an excellent explanation of how themonstrous other can easily become an issue of concern that includesall bodies. Because of vulnerability:The permeability of the boundaries that guarantee thenormatively embodied self is not secure. Neither thevulnerable nor the monstrous is fully containable withinthe binary structure of the western logos, but they signal atransformation of the relation between self and other suchthat the encounter with the strange is not a discrete eventbut the constant condition of becoming. The idea andthe corporeality of the monstrous is a status that everyoneis susceptible to assume. However, the negativity that isassociated with the monstrous is potentially damaging tothe self. (1-2)22 afternoons of alterity