Interdisciplinary Essays on Monsters and the Monstrous

Monsters show us our deepest fears and anxieties, our discomfort with difference, and our simultaneous repulsion with and fascination for the other. Understanding that the concept of the monster can be a political tool used to dehumanize opponents and a psychological tool that can help us reconsider our beliefs, Interdisciplinary Essays on Monsters and the Monstrous analyses and explores the enduring influence and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human societies.

Introducing the innovative practice of “imagining monsters” as a way to rethink the key organizing principles in our society that we have traditionally taken for granted, the authors explore not only what monsters are but, most importantly, what monsters reveal about us. This cutting-edge collection of chapters challenges us to contradict worldviews, such as the binary of gender, that have organized our thinking for millennia. Showcasing discussions loaded with ontological, ideological, socio-political, and aesthetic implications, the monstrous is rendered uncannily familiar as our own public and domestic socio-political and psycho-emotional realities are subjected to scrutiny.

Launching a critical question: when faced with an existential threat, what can we do? The authors show us how the study of monsters and monstrosity is perfectly positioned to answer. Tackling this question from a unique interdisciplinary scope, the research presented in the chapters are interesting reading for a variety of researchers interested in monsters and the monstrous from across sub-disciplines.

The collection showcases new and original interdisciplinary case studies written by authors from several different countries across Australia, France, The Netherlands, Poland and the UK. Taking an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive approach, this carefully curated collection elaborates embodied encounters with death through music across a variety of praxes and disciplines such as death & grief, queer studies, disability, philosophy, and more. Providing a mix of personal perspectives and insights on the impact of music and death alongside more conventional academic studies, the chapters reveal how music and human nature are intimately, and bodily, entwined.

Framed by opening and closing chapters written by the team of three editors, this core text in the field provides a unique overview of the implications and ramifications of the embodiment of death through music and the musicalisation of death through the body, and signposts possibilities for further research.