For this second seminar we will concentrate on the figure of the Monster, including questions of the grotesque and the nonhuman, states of abjectness and hybridity. The Monster will be explored as a poetical figure that relates us to experiences of horror, as well as practices of disfigurement and defacement, mutation and collage – the production of haunted form. While the Fool enabled a consideration of nonsense and stupidity as productive for poetic being, the Monster will steer us closer to questions of materiality and embodiment – or what Mikhail Bakhtin terms “the bodily lower stratum.” Within this lower region, we encounter the uncanny appearances of ghouls and goblins, demons and the demented, and more: one’s own fantasies, where reason and rationality are pulled closer to the unspeakable, or as Mary Douglas beautifully states, the “dirty” center that haunts the social order. Finally, we’ll consider a number of artists whose works show us the dynamics of monstrosity, including Mike Kelley, Thomas Hirschhorn, Hans Bellmer, Marcel Dzama, Carolee Schneemann, Cindy Sherman and Sandra Vasquez de la Horra. Through their works we’ll reflect upon the poetic potential of collage, the fragment, excess, fecal matter and dirty jokes.
Bibliography:
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World
Julia Kristeva, The Powers of Horror
Jeffrey Cohen, Monster Theory
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger