Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

the many possibilities for things to go wrong. Dreaming is anotherliminal and dangerous part of the night. This belief says that “it [thenight] was a transforming agent” (Bildaur 139) capable of changingeven the most pure, devout people into beings filled with sin anddesire through the uncontrollable temptation of the dream. Ourdreams, like our imaginations, are capable of creating whateverreality we wish, and the dreams themselves had the potential to benightmares, and to transform the night into something even morefearful than reality. These liminal crossroads created through dreamsand the ability to change seemingly ordinary things, these times ofdarkness where the human has the potential to choose a path of eviland sin or a path of good and purity, are cause for the “fear, desire,anxiety, and fantasy” that Cohen mentions. The desire to sin, theanxiety of potential meetings with evil beings, and the fantasy ofimagination and dream for our ancestors but also for modern folkmake the monstrous body of the night a big part of culture inherentin human life and history.Cohen’s second thesis, “The Monster always Escapes,” discussesthe ability of the monster to constantly shift, change, and reappear.The monster cannot be killed, and Cohen believes that “Themonster’s body is both corporal and incorporeal; its threat is itspropensity to shift” (Cohen 5). Again, the monster is constantly ata crossroad, in between, liminal. The monster not only exists in aliminal space, but is itself liminal in its ability to be always changing,never a solid body. Darkness, of course, will always escape because onecannot hold, control, or kill Darkness. Darkness shifts into shadowand light, disappearing each day, only to reappear every night despiteour attempts to banish it with our electric lights. Darkness, just likeCohen’s monsters, can shift, survive, and constantly reappear tocreate more destruction. Nicholas Lash points out the cyclic qualitiesof the night, saying “The darkness of the night both falls and fades, isnever, we might say, a darkness without rhythm. Each night’s darkness56 afternoons of alterity