Monstrous Ontologies: Politics Ethics Materiality

Thinking about the monster and the monstrosity means experiencing the limit. The monster is an experience of the limit. It is precisely here that the monster and the monstrosity question thought, its syntax and grammar. The monster constitutes the limit of an order of discourse and power because it signals the crisis of the devices that include, manage and control the difference. But, more radically, the monster implies an experience of the limit because it places thought and language in front of its own limits.

The monster's philosophical question is the possibility of thinking about the indefinable to which the monster refers. That is, thinking about the singular and multiple differences in such a way that they are not subjected to a signifying device that proceeds through distinctions, partitions and determinations.

The originality of this volume lies in differentiating itself from the solutions Cultural Studies have so far given the question of the monster and venturing into the open terrain of critical theory. Therefore, in accepting the challenge that the monster launches: that of an ontology of difference.

The stakes are high. It concerns the very possibility of a critical theory able to think the difference "differentially" and multiple thinking able to escape the dialectic of identity and the sovereignty of the One.

This volume has the strength of becoming an affirmative critique of the present, an ontology of difference as a monstrous possibility of the excess of the possible, avoiding specialisms and maintaining the multiplicity and problematic nature of languages. The result is a versatile and useful text both for those who study the subject and those who want to be stimulated by their own uncanny monstrosity.

Prof. Dr. Luciano Nuzzo

Università del Salento, Italy

[...] a valuable academic contribution to Philosophy and Monster Studies, and does manage to show new paths in the exploration of the monster and the monstrous, directing our attention to how the concept of the monster may be a useful tool to interpret the world that surrounds us.

[Extract from book review appearing on the 'Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies' February 2022. Reviewer: Pázmány Péter (Catholic University, Budapest)]