Eridan15

ERIDAN 15Monsters – A Short IntroductionValentina MiškovićEssayTo talk about monsters is to talk about relations between humans and animals. Animalsrepresent a wide range of emotions in our culture – from adoring to hating them, fromusing them for food, clothing, hunting to entertainment in courts and circuses. But animalfeatures fall under a special category in our imaginarium – the monstrous.In this short introduction I will give some examples on how we connect with the animal,and create the monstrous, the unknown. We somehow create monsters and this textwill try to find the borders, the relations and reasons we create them. I will give a shortreview of medieval classifications and the modern one, find the connecting and dividingpoints and hopefully explain what is the purpose of those monsters considering theculture they were created in.Monster – between us and themAnimal can be seen as the cultural Other, and it belongs to the the opposition naturenurture,which discusses the constant divide between human culture and nature. But themonster is a product of our imagination, and thus a product of culture, but we want itto be and represent the worst in nature. The very term monster derives from Latin -toprove- (monstrere), or -to warn- (monere), explaining to us that monsters are here topinpoint something in our culture that is very wrong. It is the gateway to our collectiveimagination and reason, (ir)rational mind and creative mind.There are many monsters among us – the killers, rapists, criminals of all sorts, and theyare often called animals in comparison, but why? The border between humans andanimals is defined not just by physical, but also by moral features. The criminals turn toour enemies because they cross the moral boundary of the society. Their behavior isanti-human, thus animalistic. Their behavior represents our inner struggles that scaresour civilized mind.But monster is just a figment of our imagination. But it represents something bad or evil,because it’s not within the boundaries of civilized culture. It is outside of our comfortablebubble, it belongs in the darkness. Just like the atmosphere protects us from the infiniteabyss of the universe. But discovering universe we created we created a new species ofmonster – aliens. No matter how technologically advanced aliens we imagine, they stillfall under the same category as the savage, the monster, the hermaphrodite, the animal.They all stand for the ultimate Other.J. J. Choen offers seven theses toward understanding cultures through the monsters theybear. These are some highlights.38