{"title":"“I can’t shake the feeling that You must have saved me for something greater than this”","authors":"Amy Beddows","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v3i1.34","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v3i1.34","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126057199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines several narratives of techno-horror in literature and film. Special attention is paid to the recurring trope of monstrosity arising from a technologically augmented sense of sight. Utilizing a psychoanalytically informed analysis, this paper argues that fictions can express latent, untenable dimensions of very real experiences. In the case of techno-horror, narratives of sight, imagination, and projection-made-monstrous are rooted in contemporary relationships with technology and its capacity for depicting and transmitting unconscious fantasies. In this relationship, the technological is the extension of a tangible category of humanity, while nevertheless containing the fear that this extension dissolves its stability. Thus, the genre of techno-horror is unique in expressing the role of unconscious fantasies – our unattainable ideals for becoming “prosthetic Gods,” as Freud put it (1930) – in our relationship with technology. Like the ideal of transcendence in religion, this technological ideal is a desire for both an impossible future, as well as the wish to return to an equally impossible, infantile past. Ultimately, this paper suggests that techno-horror narratives are expressions of a failure in taking responsibility for the othered unconscious fantasies that motivate our relationship with technology. Understanding these narratives within the context of psychoanalytic projection and situating them within the long tradition of imagining a transcendence of the human subject affords a better understanding of the cultural work accomplished by these contemporary expressions of the human-made-monstrous.
{"title":"Prosthetic Gods, Projected Monsters","authors":"Filip Andjelkovic","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v3i1.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v3i1.19","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines several narratives of techno-horror in literature and film. Special attention is paid to the recurring trope of monstrosity arising from a technologically augmented sense of sight. Utilizing a psychoanalytically informed analysis, this paper argues that fictions can express latent, untenable dimensions of very real experiences. In the case of techno-horror, narratives of sight, imagination, and projection-made-monstrous are rooted in contemporary relationships with technology and its capacity for depicting and transmitting unconscious fantasies. In this relationship, the technological is the extension of a tangible category of humanity, while nevertheless containing the fear that this extension dissolves its stability.\u0000Thus, the genre of techno-horror is unique in expressing the role of unconscious fantasies – our unattainable ideals for becoming “prosthetic Gods,” as Freud put it (1930) – in our relationship with technology. Like the ideal of transcendence in religion, this technological ideal is a desire for both an impossible future, as well as the wish to return to an equally impossible, infantile past. Ultimately, this paper suggests that techno-horror narratives are expressions of a failure in taking responsibility for the othered unconscious fantasies that motivate our relationship with technology. Understanding these narratives within the context of psychoanalytic projection and situating them within the long tradition of imagining a transcendence of the human subject affords a better understanding of the cultural work accomplished by these contemporary expressions of the human-made-monstrous.","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"109 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121806279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Christopher Bell. The Dalai Lama and the Nechung Oracle","authors":"Nataska Mikles","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v3i1.32","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v3i1.32","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123932059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ghost hunting became widespread in the United States after the October 2004 of the reality television show Ghost Hunters. Ghost hunters, or paranormal investigators, use scientistic methods to investigate reportedly haunted locations and seek evidence of ghosts and other spirits. Ghost hunters are preoccupied with demons in particular. The analytical lens provided by twentieth-century German philosopher of religion Rudolf Otto reveals that demonic experiences serve as powerful religious experiences for ghost hunters and provide comforting evidence of the existence of the spirit world, a cosmos ordered according to good and evil, and even God.
{"title":"Ghost Hunters' Demonic Encounters as Religious Experiences","authors":"D. Wise","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v3i1.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v3i1.28","url":null,"abstract":"Ghost hunting became widespread in the United States after the October 2004 of the reality television show Ghost Hunters. Ghost hunters, or paranormal investigators, use scientistic methods to investigate reportedly haunted locations and seek evidence of ghosts and other spirits. Ghost hunters are preoccupied with demons in particular. The analytical lens provided by twentieth-century German philosopher of religion Rudolf Otto reveals that demonic experiences serve as powerful religious experiences for ghost hunters and provide comforting evidence of the existence of the spirit world, a cosmos ordered according to good and evil, and even God.","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130003219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Do It and the Evangelical Imagination","authors":"Zachary Doiron","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v3i1.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v3i1.35","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132152262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Maja Bondestam, ed., Exceptional Bodies in Early Modern Culture: Concepts of Monstrosity before the Advent of the Normal.","authors":"M. Heyes","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v3i1.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v3i1.33","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133935463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Suicide Forest Village","authors":"Kai Akagi","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v3i1.30","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v3i1.30","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128422308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines an Early Jewish text entitled the Book of the Watchers that is part of a larger work known as 1 Enoch. The Book of the Watchers offers a vivid and disturbing portrait of the excessive violence on earth that led to the flood, attributing the situation to destructive giants. Watchers expands and interprets the account of the crisis that precipitated the flood in Gen 6:1-4. Comparison of the two texts demonstrates that Watchers in particular expands the description in Genesis 6 of the giants (sons of the angels) and the violence they perpetrate. Exegesis, however, alone cannot explain this phenomenon. Appeal to monster studies can help us better understand the issue. This article argues that the retelling of the flood story in the Book of the Watchers was popular in ancient Judaism because it offers a compelling construction of the known world, and social customs that are normative within it—including a prohibition against murder and the delineation of norms regarding of food—by offering a shocking description of the antediluvian world, before divine regulations regarding such behavior were promulgated. The heinous and cannibalistic violence of the antediluvian era as presented in the Book of the Watchers helps justify the current (post-diluvian) order by presenting a coherent account of how it came into being in a way that legitimates God’s dominion over it. The essay also explores how attending to the theme of the monstrous can provide insight into the Book of the Watchers in relation to older mythic traditions embedded in Genesis 1 and the Babylonian creation poem, the Enuma Elish. The article also contends that Watchers’ reformulation of the flood story with its heightened monstrosity can be profitably explained against the backdrop of cultural anxieties that were pervasive during the Hellenistic era during which it was written.
{"title":"When Monsters Walked the Earth","authors":"M. Goff","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v2i1.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v2i1.7","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines an Early Jewish text entitled the Book of the Watchers that is part of a larger work known as 1 Enoch. The Book of the Watchers offers a vivid and disturbing portrait of the excessive violence on earth that led to the flood, attributing the situation to destructive giants. Watchers expands and interprets the account of the crisis that precipitated the flood in Gen 6:1-4. Comparison of the two texts demonstrates that Watchers in particular expands the description in Genesis 6 of the giants (sons of the angels) and the violence they perpetrate. Exegesis, however, alone cannot explain this phenomenon. Appeal to monster studies can help us better understand the issue. This article argues that the retelling of the flood story in the Book of the Watchers was popular in ancient Judaism because it offers a compelling construction of the known world, and social customs that are normative within it—including a prohibition against murder and the delineation of norms regarding of food—by offering a shocking description of the antediluvian world, before divine regulations regarding such behavior were promulgated. The heinous and cannibalistic violence of the antediluvian era as presented in the Book of the Watchers helps justify the current (post-diluvian) order by presenting a coherent account of how it came into being in a way that legitimates God’s dominion over it. The essay also explores how attending to the theme of the monstrous can provide insight into the Book of the Watchers in relation to older mythic traditions embedded in Genesis 1 and the Babylonian creation poem, the Enuma Elish. The article also contends that Watchers’ reformulation of the flood story with its heightened monstrosity can be profitably explained against the backdrop of cultural anxieties that were pervasive during the Hellenistic era during which it was written.","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117062588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Review of William Brown and David H. Fleming, The Squid Cinema from Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Cthulumedia.
威廉·布朗和大卫·弗莱明:《来自地狱的乌贼电影:基诺特乌斯地狱与克苏鲁媒的出现》。
{"title":"William Brown and David H. Fleming, The Squid Cinema from Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Cthulumedia.","authors":"Leland Merritt","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v2i1.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v2i1.24","url":null,"abstract":"Review of William Brown and David H. Fleming, The Squid Cinema from Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Cthulumedia.","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"87 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124163999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the semantics of spirits and monsters with reference to the Brazilian spirit-incorporation religion of Umbanda (and secondarily to the monster studies literature). Semantics is the study of meaning. The most common, and common-sense, view of meaning roots it in reference, in representation, in signification, in how words match up with things. This article argues that an alternative semantic theory – seeing meaning in interpretation rather than representation – has greater value for making sense of spirits, monsters and gods. The article first characterizes these competing theories of meaning, then discusses problems with the representational assumptions of monster studies, and finally proposes the concept of “semantic reduction” as a tool for interpreting Umbanda’s spirits (and by extension, monsters and gods). This concept notes how attempts to interpret spirits soon run into the expected, the constrained, the pre-established, the scripted. The speech and actions of spirits are semantically reduced because their meanings are constrained and delimited: the semantic networks that constitute these meanings are bound by the religion’s ritual, doctrinal, narrative, institutional and material frames. Making sense of spirits, monsters, and gods is no different than making sense of human beings in “normal” contexts, except for the additional methodological challenge of learning to take account of the former’s unusual contexts.
{"title":"Semantic Reduction of Spirits and Monsters","authors":"S. Engler","doi":"10.58997/jgm.v2i1.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v2i1.8","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the semantics of spirits and monsters with reference to the Brazilian spirit-incorporation religion of Umbanda (and secondarily to the monster studies literature). Semantics is the study of meaning. The most common, and common-sense, view of meaning roots it in reference, in representation, in signification, in how words match up with things. This article argues that an alternative semantic theory – seeing meaning in interpretation rather than representation – has greater value for making sense of spirits, monsters and gods. The article first characterizes these competing theories of meaning, then discusses problems with the representational assumptions of monster studies, and finally proposes the concept of “semantic reduction” as a tool for interpreting Umbanda’s spirits (and by extension, monsters and gods). This concept notes how attempts to interpret spirits soon run into the expected, the constrained, the pre-established, the scripted. The speech and actions of spirits are semantically reduced because their meanings are constrained and delimited: the semantic networks that constitute these meanings are bound by the religion’s ritual, doctrinal, narrative, institutional and material frames. Making sense of spirits, monsters, and gods is no different than making sense of human beings in “normal” contexts, except for the additional methodological challenge of learning to take account of the former’s unusual contexts.","PeriodicalId":405772,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Gods and Monsters","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125342441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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