Weinstock Jeffrey Andrew (ed.) The Monster Theory Reader

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. — x, 560 p. — ISBN 978-1-5179-0524-8, 978-1-5179-0525-5.A collection of scholarship on monsters and their meaning — across genres, disciplines, methodologies, and time — from foundational texts to the most recent contributions.
Zombies and vampires, banshees and basilisks, demons and wendigos, goblins, gorgons, golems, and ghosts. From the mythical monstrous races of the ancient world to the murderous cyborgs of our day, monsters have haunted the human imagination, giving shape to the fears and desires of their time. And as long as there have been monsters, there have been attempts to make sense of them, to explain where they come from and what they mean. This book collects the best of what contemporary scholars have to say on the subject, in the process creating a map of the monstrous across the vast and complex terrain of the human psyche.
Editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock prepares the way with a genealogy of monster theory, traveling from the earliest explanations of monsters through psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and cultural studies, to the development of monster theory per se — and including Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s foundational essay “Monster Theory (Seven Theses),” reproduced here in its entirety. There follow sections devoted to the terminology and concepts used in talking about monstrosity; the relevance of race, religion, gender, class, sexuality, and physical appearance; the application of monster theory to contemporary cultural concerns such as ecology, religion, and terrorism; and finally the possibilities monsters present for envisioning a different future.
Including the most interesting and important proponents of monster theory and its progenitors, from Sigmund Freud to Julia Kristeva to J. Halberstam, Donna Haraway, Barbara Creed, and Stephen T. Asma — as well as harder-to-find contributions such as Robin Wood’s and Masahiro Mori’s — this is the most extensive and comprehensive collection of scholarship on monsters and monstrosity across disciplines and methods ever to be assembled and will serve as an invaluable resource for students of the uncanny in all its guises.Acknowledgments.
Introduction: A Genealogy of Monster Theory. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock.
Monster Culture (Seven Theses). Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.
The Monster Theory Toolbox.
The Uncanny. Sigmund Freud.
The Uncanny Valley. Masahiro Mori.
Approaching Abjection. Julia Kristeva.
An Introduction to the American Horror Film. Robin Wood.
Fantastic Biologies and the Structures of Horrific Imagery. Noël Carroll.
Parasites and Perverts: An Introduction to Gothic Monstrosity. Jack Halberstam.
Monsterizing Difference.
Monstrous Strangers at the Edge of the World: The Monstrous Races. Alexa Wright.
Blood, Jews, and Monsters in Medieval Culture. Bettina Bildhauer.
Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection. Barbara Creed.
The Monster and the Homosexual. Harry Benshoff.
The Undead: A Haunted Whiteness. Annalee Newitz.
Intolerable Ambiguity: Freaks as/at the Limit. Elizabeth Grosz.
Monsters and Culture.
Monsters and the Moral Imagination. Stephen T. Asma.
Introduction to Religion and Its Monsters. Timothy Beal.
The Self’s Clean and Proper Body. Margrit Shildrick.
Haunting Modernity: Tanuki, Trains, and Transformation in Japan. Michael Dylan Foster.
Invisible Monsters: Vision, Horror, and Contemporary Culture. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock.
Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots. Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai.
Zombie Trouble: Zombie Texts, Bare Life, and Displaced People. Jon Stratton.
The Promises of Monsters.
Beasts from the Deep. Erin Suzuki.
Of Swamp Dragons: Mud, Megalopolis, and a Future for Ecocriticism. Anthony Lioi.
The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others. Donna Haraway.
Posthuman Teratology. Patricia MacCormack.
Previous Publications.
Contributors.
Index.