Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

the way they can make us feel, but also perhaps we believe that therationalization of our fears will help to banish the monsters andrelieve us of our anxiety. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen posits seven theses onMonster Culture. Cohen’s theses attempt to define the monstrous,and, using his ideas, it is easy to see how darkness becomes definedas a monster to be afraid of.His first thesis, entitled “The Monster’s Body is a CulturalBody,” discusses the idea that the Monster is “pure culture” (Cohen4). Cohen asserts that “The monster is born…at this metaphoriccrossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment…Themonster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, andfantasy, giving them life and an uncanny independence” (Cohen 4).While darkness has no physical body in itself, like the body of ahuman, the time of the day it represents is indeed at a crossroads, andits being easily “incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy.” Thismakes it almost seem to be a being of living, breathing physicality,as real and touchable as another human being. When we meet thenight it is with as much belief in its danger to our well being as if wewere to meet a serial killer. Really it is no wonder, for what potentiallyhides in the shadowy darkness is absolutely terrifying. Christianitypromoted thousands of years ago the nighttime’s apparent ability toshift into a time of evil, allowing for demonic and spiritual beingsto cross over and walk the earth (Bildaur 138). This might be anoriginally religious idea, but it is thousands of years old and stillinstills real fear and terror today. Youngs and Harris note that “Thenight became home to imagined horrors” (Bildaur 135), and theseimagined horrors still exist for people in the modern day and of anyreligion, whether the fears be demonically and spiritually connectedor other manifestations of our elaborate imaginations. The darknessallows for this in between time, this place of crossroads, where, atleast in our minds, anything can happen. It is the “Quintessentialterror of the dark and its unknowns” (Bildaur 135) that leaves openlauren apt 55