Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

permits spirits to travel between their world and ours. The darknesscreates shadows untouched by the daylight, much darker and moresinister than the shadows created by the sun, where it is neithercompletely light nor dark and where anything can happen. However,perhaps most liminal and dangerous of all, is that the darkness allowsfor dreams. Human beings have an “Inability to control the bodyduring the dark and sleeping hours” (Bildaur 140), making anythingpossible, and dreams are the physical representation of potential sinand disgrace. Dreaming also literally puts the human in the liminalposition between sleep and awake, conscious and unconscious, andwe have no control over the subjects of our dreams. It is the liminalqualities of the night-its inability or refusal to be neither good norbad, neither real nor spiritual-that creates the dangers which cause itto be monstrous.Cohen’s fourth thesis, “The Monster Dwells at the Gates ofDifference” (Cohen7), discusses the idea that the monster embodiesdifference. Whether this means gender, race, beliefs, cultural, orother, difference is monstrous. Cohen says, “The monster is anincorporation of the Outside, the Beyond-of all those loci that arerhetorically placed as distant and distinct but originate Within”(Cohen 7). This part of the monster is monstrous particularlybecause it is recognizable; because its differences walk with andblend in among us, parading as one of us but are in fact grotesquelydifferent. The night time provides the means for the blending of thedifferent, the ability to mask any differences with darkness. It alsoallows those who are hiding to come out and show their true colors.One such example of this was the medieval (and perhaps current tosome extent) view of women as fearful others. Youngs and Harrispoint out that “the word ‘night’ was gendered feminine in Latinatelanguages; the safe, respectable day was always masculine” (Bildaur140). This negative correlation to women, however, was just the start.The nighttime was believed to have been the agent of destruction58 afternoons of alterity