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The Monster Theory Reader
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. Contributors: Stephen T. Asma, Columbia College Chicago; Timothy K. Beal, Case Western Reserve U; Harry Benshoff, U of North Texas; Bettina Bildhauer, U of St. Andrews; Noel Carroll, The Graduate Center, CUNY; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Arizona State U; Barbara Creed, U of Melbourne; Michael Dylan Foster, UC Davis; Sigmund Freud; Elizabeth Grosz, Duke U; J. Halberstam, Columbia U; Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz; Julia Kristeva, Paris Diderot U; Anthony Lioi, The Julliard School; Patricia MacCormack, Anglia Ruskin U; Masahiro Mori; Annalee Newitz; Jasbir K. Puar, Rutgers U; Amit A. Rai, Queen Mary U of London; Margrit Shildrick, Stockholm U; Jon Stratton, U of South Australia; Erin Suzuki, UC San Diego; Robin Wood, York U; Alexa Wright, U of Westminster.
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. Contributors: Stephen T. Asma, Columbia College Chicago; Timothy K. Beal, Case Western Reserve U; Harry Benshoff, U of North Texas; Bettina Bildhauer, U of St. Andrews; Noel Carroll, The Graduate Center, CUNY; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Arizona State U; Barbara Creed, U of Melbourne; Michael Dylan Foster, UC Davis; Sigmund Freud; Elizabeth Grosz, Duke U; J. Halberstam, Columbia U; Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz; Julia Kristeva, Paris Diderot U; Anthony Lioi, The Julliard School; Patricia MacCormack, Anglia Ruskin U; Masahiro Mori; Annalee Newitz; Jasbir K. Puar, Rutgers U; Amit A. Rai, Queen Mary U of London; Margrit Shildrick, Stockholm U; Jon Stratton, U of South Australia; Erin Suzuki, UC San Diego; Robin Wood, York U; Alexa Wright, U of Westminster.
600 pages, Hardcover
Published January 15, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 5, 2024
This was such a mixed bag.
The writing that addressed the design and make-up of monsters, so to speak, in the "toolbox" section was useful. The game changer piece for me was Margrit Shildrick's "The Self's Clean and Proper Body" for her analysis of how conjoined twins shake up Western philosophy's understanding of what and who is the individual. Suzuki's chapter on techno-Orientalism in narratives about the Pacific in US blockbusters had me reevaluating US made kaiju fare. Donna Haraway's theorisation of social nature that includes human, unhuman, machine had me neck-deep immersed despite it being easily three times as long as every other chapter.
However, as I read I became increasingly confused at the selection. A collection of mostly global north writers with a US-American editor published with a US-American college but not even Annalee Newitz's Lovecraft essay was focused on anti-Blackness, although she may have been the only contributor to cite a Black intellectual. Not a single contributor was of (visibly) African descent? Then, I read Weinstock's essay in which he wrote in all sincerity that monstrosity was no longer about appearance but "refers first and foremost to the intention and desire to do harm to the innocent" followed up by some of the most dehumanising rhetoric in the entire book. He, with serious intention, applied the monster label to fictional characters and IRL terrorists, unbothered, and I understood. It should have never been given the compliment of being published alongside's Puar and Rai's evisceration of Weinstock's points with their look at the "War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots".
Patricia McCormack's posthumanism essay punctuated how much the 21st century contributions flopped from the writers' lack of engagement with Black writers. It revealed to me that, despite the intellectualising of of "cross" this, "trans" that, and all ambiguities, whiteness is invested to an intense degree in the categories of "human" and "monster" such that, even when someone like McCormack's argues for the burgeoning irrelevance or lack of need for "human" as a category, her imaginaton can only take her to "we're all monsters, what joy".
Read Sylvia Wynter and stop waste mi time, please. Kmrct.
The writing that addressed the design and make-up of monsters, so to speak, in the "toolbox" section was useful. The game changer piece for me was Margrit Shildrick's "The Self's Clean and Proper Body" for her analysis of how conjoined twins shake up Western philosophy's understanding of what and who is the individual. Suzuki's chapter on techno-Orientalism in narratives about the Pacific in US blockbusters had me reevaluating US made kaiju fare. Donna Haraway's theorisation of social nature that includes human, unhuman, machine had me neck-deep immersed despite it being easily three times as long as every other chapter.
However, as I read I became increasingly confused at the selection. A collection of mostly global north writers with a US-American editor published with a US-American college but not even Annalee Newitz's Lovecraft essay was focused on anti-Blackness, although she may have been the only contributor to cite a Black intellectual. Not a single contributor was of (visibly) African descent? Then, I read Weinstock's essay in which he wrote in all sincerity that monstrosity was no longer about appearance but "refers first and foremost to the intention and desire to do harm to the innocent" followed up by some of the most dehumanising rhetoric in the entire book. He, with serious intention, applied the monster label to fictional characters and IRL terrorists, unbothered, and I understood. It should have never been given the compliment of being published alongside's Puar and Rai's evisceration of Weinstock's points with their look at the "War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots".
Patricia McCormack's posthumanism essay punctuated how much the 21st century contributions flopped from the writers' lack of engagement with Black writers. It revealed to me that, despite the intellectualising of of "cross" this, "trans" that, and all ambiguities, whiteness is invested to an intense degree in the categories of "human" and "monster" such that, even when someone like McCormack's argues for the burgeoning irrelevance or lack of need for "human" as a category, her imaginaton can only take her to "we're all monsters, what joy".
Read Sylvia Wynter and stop waste mi time, please. Kmrct.
March 31, 2022
this book fucking delivered. it was everything i hoped it would be - challenging, philosophical, thought provoking - and more. definitely not for everyone though, especially the more philosophical texts like Kristeva and Haraway. but still definitely worth it.
December 21, 2021
I really liked this book. I'm not sure if I'd categorize it as an intro book though, I had trouble understanding a few of the concepts but I imagine that this book isn't meant to be read as one comprehensive book.
This book does a good job at providing you with a general idea of the arguments that go on within Monster Theory and there are several sources cited within each chapter that could help you to get a more in-depth understanding of each subtopic.
This book does a good job at providing you with a general idea of the arguments that go on within Monster Theory and there are several sources cited within each chapter that could help you to get a more in-depth understanding of each subtopic.
June 5, 2021
Weinstock's book is a collection of articles addressing the theory about monsters. As a reader it has a good collection of pieces addressing different mediums and interpretations.
"Above all, the monstrous is that which creates [a] sense of vertigo, that which calls into question our (their, anyone's) epistemological worldview, highlights its fragmentary and inadequate nature, and thereby asks us...to acknowledge the failures of our systems of categorization." 3
"Focusing first on the scholarly approach to monstrosity, theorization of monstrosity from antiquity to today has tended to divide along three tracks: teratology, the study of "monstrous" births; mythology, the consideration of fantastical creatives; and psychology, the exploration of how human beings come to act in monstrous or inhuman ways. Teratology and psychology are more immediately connected to what we may think of as the "real world" than mythology, which often has to do with fantasy or dram; however, all three divisions find their grounding in the human experience of overlaying meaning upon existence. Whether the monstrous comes to us or we conjure it up, monstrosity is a loose and flexible epistemological category that allows us a space to define that which complicates or seems to resist definition." 4
"Monstrosity in general, it should be noted, is frequently correlated with hybridity perceived to be unnatural. Cohen's third thesis from "Monster Culture" is that the monster "is the harbinger of category crises..." 9
"With the waning of the freak show in the mid-twentieth century, fantasies about monstrous hybrid births migrated to science fiction where hybrids either with the project of "unnatural" human tampering, as in H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) or Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990), or populated other plants (consider for example, the famous Cantina scene from George Lucas's first Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope [1977])." 11
"The monster, as Cohen observes, does not just repulse; it simultaneously attracts. The monster is powerful and linked to forbidden desires and practices: "Through the body of monster fantasies of aggression, domination, and inversion are allowed safe expression in a clearly delimited and permanently liminal space." 19
"Foucault turned his attention explicitly to monsters in his lectures at the College de France in 1974-75, which clustered around the theme of the "emergence of the abnormal individual in the nineteenth century" and focused in particular of the "human monster," the "individual to be corrected," and the onanist. In these lectures, Foucault shows how monstrosity is not only a relational term-monstrosity is always defined against that which is not monstrous-but also part of a regulatory regime that disciplines human beings into acting acting and thinking in particular ways." 26
"This refusal to participate in the classificatory "order of things" is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions...The horizon where the monsters dwell might well be imagined as the visible edge of the hermeneutic circle itself: the monstrous offers an escape from its hermetic path, an invitation to explore new spirals, new and interconnected methods of perceiving the world. In the face of the monster, scientific inquiry and its ordered rationality crumble." 40
"The monster is continually linked to forbidden practices, in order to normalize and to enforce. The monster also attracts. The same creatures who terrify and interdict can evoke potent escapist fantasies; the lining of monstrosity with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing as a temporary egress from constraint." 49
"If the nation, therefore, is a textual production that creates national community in terms of an inside and an outside and then makes those categories indispensable, Gothic becomes one place to look for a fiction of the foreign, a narrative of who and what is not-English and not-native. The racism that becomes a mark of nineteenth-century Gothic arises out of the attempt within horror fiction to give form to what terrifies the national community. Gothic monsters are defined both as other than the imagined community and as the being that cannot be imagined as community." 160
"Arendt's point is of central importance to an understanding of the history of Gothic. We might note in passing that, from the late eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, the terrain of the Gothic horror shifted from the fear of corrupted aristocracy or clergy, represented by the haunted castle or abbey, to the fear embodied by monstrous bodies. Reading Gothic with nineteenth-century ideologies of race suggested why this shift occurs." 161
"In the words of Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, "what is socially peripheral is so frequently symbolically central." 180
"Returning once more to Foucault, we learn that in transgressing the laws of both nature and culture, the monster "combines the impossible and the forbidden." It is "a breach of the law that automatically stands outside the law." He explains this further: "It could be said that the monster's power and its capacity to create anxiety are due to the fact that it violates the law while leaving it with nothing to say." Monsters absorb the horror of what is unknown and unregulated by giving form to the unspeakable, and perhaps even unthinkable, monstrousness that cannot be contained within existing categories." 183
"This racist logic of progress holds that people of color are frozen in time, unchanged since the origins of human history." 241
"Because race relations in the United States are deeply connected to class relations, Lovecraft's work inevitably also captures the uneasiness of a nation witnessing the death throes of economic systems associated with imperialism and slavey. Often, the immortal and undead monsters in his stories are explicitly connected to the economic fate of an individual or community." 244
"Teratology was largely a mystic and superstitutous doctrine until it was linked more closely to the medicalization of bodily regulation in the sixteenth century and became a category of illness for the first time." 275
"Above all, the monstrous is that which creates [a] sense of vertigo, that which calls into question our (their, anyone's) epistemological worldview, highlights its fragmentary and inadequate nature, and thereby asks us...to acknowledge the failures of our systems of categorization." 3
"Focusing first on the scholarly approach to monstrosity, theorization of monstrosity from antiquity to today has tended to divide along three tracks: teratology, the study of "monstrous" births; mythology, the consideration of fantastical creatives; and psychology, the exploration of how human beings come to act in monstrous or inhuman ways. Teratology and psychology are more immediately connected to what we may think of as the "real world" than mythology, which often has to do with fantasy or dram; however, all three divisions find their grounding in the human experience of overlaying meaning upon existence. Whether the monstrous comes to us or we conjure it up, monstrosity is a loose and flexible epistemological category that allows us a space to define that which complicates or seems to resist definition." 4
"Monstrosity in general, it should be noted, is frequently correlated with hybridity perceived to be unnatural. Cohen's third thesis from "Monster Culture" is that the monster "is the harbinger of category crises..." 9
"With the waning of the freak show in the mid-twentieth century, fantasies about monstrous hybrid births migrated to science fiction where hybrids either with the project of "unnatural" human tampering, as in H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) or Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990), or populated other plants (consider for example, the famous Cantina scene from George Lucas's first Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope [1977])." 11
"The monster, as Cohen observes, does not just repulse; it simultaneously attracts. The monster is powerful and linked to forbidden desires and practices: "Through the body of monster fantasies of aggression, domination, and inversion are allowed safe expression in a clearly delimited and permanently liminal space." 19
"Foucault turned his attention explicitly to monsters in his lectures at the College de France in 1974-75, which clustered around the theme of the "emergence of the abnormal individual in the nineteenth century" and focused in particular of the "human monster," the "individual to be corrected," and the onanist. In these lectures, Foucault shows how monstrosity is not only a relational term-monstrosity is always defined against that which is not monstrous-but also part of a regulatory regime that disciplines human beings into acting acting and thinking in particular ways." 26
"This refusal to participate in the classificatory "order of things" is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions...The horizon where the monsters dwell might well be imagined as the visible edge of the hermeneutic circle itself: the monstrous offers an escape from its hermetic path, an invitation to explore new spirals, new and interconnected methods of perceiving the world. In the face of the monster, scientific inquiry and its ordered rationality crumble." 40
"The monster is continually linked to forbidden practices, in order to normalize and to enforce. The monster also attracts. The same creatures who terrify and interdict can evoke potent escapist fantasies; the lining of monstrosity with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing as a temporary egress from constraint." 49
"If the nation, therefore, is a textual production that creates national community in terms of an inside and an outside and then makes those categories indispensable, Gothic becomes one place to look for a fiction of the foreign, a narrative of who and what is not-English and not-native. The racism that becomes a mark of nineteenth-century Gothic arises out of the attempt within horror fiction to give form to what terrifies the national community. Gothic monsters are defined both as other than the imagined community and as the being that cannot be imagined as community." 160
"Arendt's point is of central importance to an understanding of the history of Gothic. We might note in passing that, from the late eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, the terrain of the Gothic horror shifted from the fear of corrupted aristocracy or clergy, represented by the haunted castle or abbey, to the fear embodied by monstrous bodies. Reading Gothic with nineteenth-century ideologies of race suggested why this shift occurs." 161
"In the words of Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, "what is socially peripheral is so frequently symbolically central." 180
"Returning once more to Foucault, we learn that in transgressing the laws of both nature and culture, the monster "combines the impossible and the forbidden." It is "a breach of the law that automatically stands outside the law." He explains this further: "It could be said that the monster's power and its capacity to create anxiety are due to the fact that it violates the law while leaving it with nothing to say." Monsters absorb the horror of what is unknown and unregulated by giving form to the unspeakable, and perhaps even unthinkable, monstrousness that cannot be contained within existing categories." 183
"This racist logic of progress holds that people of color are frozen in time, unchanged since the origins of human history." 241
"Because race relations in the United States are deeply connected to class relations, Lovecraft's work inevitably also captures the uneasiness of a nation witnessing the death throes of economic systems associated with imperialism and slavey. Often, the immortal and undead monsters in his stories are explicitly connected to the economic fate of an individual or community." 244
"Teratology was largely a mystic and superstitutous doctrine until it was linked more closely to the medicalization of bodily regulation in the sixteenth century and became a category of illness for the first time." 275
January 3, 2025
Very useful collection to get a sense of the field of Monster studies. Some of the pieces are very dense and grounded in psychoanalysis so it took me a lot of time to work through. I do often find the theorization of race to be more shallow than it could be and a lot of the this work could be enriched with more engagement of Black Studies. There are mentions of monstrosity in works by thinkers like, for, example, Frantz Fanon and Hortense Spillers that could have fit into this. But I learned a great deal from this collection and am excited to put it into conversation with Black Studies critical thought around modernity and the human.
April 12, 2025
This is one of the more accessible 'monster theory' books that collects different essays from people who discuss a wide variety of things. However, when you get into monster theory, you realize that there are specific subsets like how it interacts with queer theory. How it interacts with critical race theory. How it interacts with disability and so much more. And so while it's impossible to have a collection that comprehensively addresses all of those factors as well, this book is probably a good start for someone dipping their toe in the water.
August 28, 2020
Interesting and well researched.
July 13, 2022
Transformative collection of essays. I recommend to both academics and curious readers.
April 21, 2023
Absolutely brilliant.
April 24, 2025
My third reread of this work. Always a joy.
December 2, 2025
Thought provoking and honestly opened my mind to just understanding things through multiple disciplines
August 12, 2024
My biggest reading accomplishment so far in 2024. Massive tome. Lots to consider.
Want to read
September 6, 2025Fantastic set of essays.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews