Scary Monsters: Hybrids, Mashups, and Other Illegitimate Children

Human creativity, like human reproduction, always makes new out of old in ways that copyright law has not fully recognized. The genre of vidding, a type of remix made mostly by women, demonstrates how creativity can be disruptive, and how that disruptiveness is often tied to ideas about sex and gender. The most frightening of our modern creations—the Frankenstein’s monsters that seem most appropriative and uncanny in light of old copyright doctrine—are good indicators of what our next generation of creativity may look like, especially if creators’ diversity in gender, race, and economic background is taken into account

Psychick Order

Preserving Psychick Order is an investigation into the subliminal, of a body processing trauma and transition. I explore how my mind and body filter memory, fear, and the impact of the past into the present. Since childhood, making dolls has been a way for me to express complex feelings, especially as they relate to dynamics between biological and found family. By tenderly modeling dolls after my own transforming physical features and mental processes, I make connections between the effects of my mind on my body and vice versa. I like to describe the resulting forms as queer monsters trying to camouflage themselves poorly in my parents’ home in rural Georgia. Unconscious becomes conscious, inside moves outward, and unmasking realizes the self and the trickster within

"Monsters on the Brain: An Evolutionary Epistemology of Horror"

The article discusses the evolutionary development of horror and fear in animals and humans, including in regard to cognition and physiological aspects of the brain. An overview of the social aspects of emotions, including the role that emotions play in interpersonal relations and the role that empathy plays in humans' ethics, is provided. An overview of the psychological aspects of monsters, including humans' simultaneous repulsion and interest in horror films that depict monsters, is also provided

Writing biology with mutant mice: the monstrous potential of post genomic life

Social scientific accounts identified in the biological grammars of early genomics a monstrous reductionism, ‘an example of brute life, the minimalist essence of things’ (Rabinow, 1996, p. 89). Concern about this reductionism focused particularly on its links to modernist notions of control; the possibility of calculating, predicting and intervening in the biological futures of individuals and populations. Yet, the trajectories of the post genomic sciences have not unfolded in this way, challenging scientists involved in the production and integration of complex biological data and the interpretative strategies of social scientists honed in critiquing this reductionism. The post genomic sciences are now proliferating points from which to understand relations in biology, between genes and environments, as well as between species and spaces, opening up future possibilities and different ways of thinking about life. This paper explores the emerging topologies and temporalities of one form of post genomic research, drawing upon ethnographic research on international efforts in functional genomics, which are using mutant mice to understand mammalian gene function. Using vocabularies on the monstrous from Derrida and Haraway, I suggest an alternative conceptualisation of monstrosity within biology, in which the ascendancy of mice in functional genomics acts as a constant supplement to the reductionist grammars of genomics. Rather than searching for the minimalist essence of things, this form of functional genomics has become an exercise in the production and organization of biological surplus and excess, which is experimental, corporeal and affective. The uncertain functioning of monsters in this contexts acts as a generative catalyst for scientists and social scientists, proliferating perspectives from which to listen to and engage with the mutating landscapes, forms of life, and languages of a post genomic biology

Howling (and Bleeding) at the Moon: Menstruation, Monstrosity and the Double in the \u3ci\u3eGinger Snaps\u3c/i\u3e Werewolf Trilogy

In this essay, I explore the radical reframing of the traditional werewolf narrative with respect to the figure of the double and the abject female body in the Ginger Snaps werewolf trilogy. Notable theorists discussed herein include Barbara Creed, Carol Clover, Julia Kristeva, April Miller and Robin Wood. Throughout both its folkloric and cinematic history, the creature of the werewolf has been constructed almost invariably as a male monster suffering within a Jekyll and Hyde-like narrative of the double. An otherwise exemplary member of Robin Wood’s society of surplus repression, the male lycanthrope is doomed to endure a monthly transformation into monstrous, murderous beast, the Other that challenges normality through its very existence. The agony of the male werewolf, therefore, is generally believed to exist only with regard to the regret he feels for the previous night’s violent excesses. However, it is actually the male lycanthrope’s bodily alignment with the female Other that causes his distress. Forced to confront an abject body tied to a monthly lunar cycle, the male werewolf is feminized. Not only does the sufferer’s body not respect the boundary between human and animal, but the tentative boundary between male and female is also violated, and it is this transgression that accounts for the true agony of the classic male werewolf. The Ginger Snaps werewolf cycle challenges this narrative by situating lycanthropy within the lives of female teenagers Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald. Following the subgenre’s typical trajectory, Ginger is bitten by a werewolf, thus becoming a werewolf herself, and her younger sister, Brigitte, attempts to save her. However, by transmuting the werewolf narrative from the male to the female, the implications of the doppelganger narrative must change. By virtue of her abject female body, Ginger is already marginalized and constructed as Other in the suburban world in which she lives. There is no monstrous double for Ginger, for as a menstruating female she has always been this monster. As a result, Ginger eventually embraces her lycanthropy and in doing so also embraces her identity as a woman. She becomes the “goddamn force of nature” of her teenage dreams, and unlike the male werewolf, whose monstrosity is a nightmarish shadow of his own normality, Ginger’s monstrosity is her own reflection, an unwavering look at a fantastic self otherwise unattainable to her in the world she lives. Yet Ginger Snaps is still a doppelganger narrative. It is Brigitte who suffers under the agony of Ginger’s transformation, for in losing Ginger, Brigitte loses her identity as well. Brigitte longs for the reconciliation of her and her sister, but as the two have become two distinct persons in Ginger’s monstrosity, this is impossible. Coded as Carol Clover’s Final Girl figure, Brigitte destroys her sister, thereby coming to stand for the symbolic order she resists so enthusiastically at the start of the film. However, despite their radically different engagements with monstrosity, both Ginger and Brigitte are punished. It appears that as subversive as the Ginger Snaps films are in respect to the werewolf narrative, they also reflect a deep cultural ambivalence about female identity. It is only together that the girls can triumph, making the Ginger Snaps cycle a powerful statement on the power of relationality between females in the construction and maintenance of self

On the relation between mathematical and numerical relativity

The large scale binary black hole effort in numerical relativity has led to an increasing distinction between numerical and mathematical relativity. This note discusses this situation and gives some examples of succesful interactions between numerical and mathematical methods is general relativity.Comment: 12 page