Conclusion

The concluding chapter provides a comprehensive summary of the preceding arguments, reflecting on the pervasive presence of the monstrous vegan trope across the past 200 years of Anglophone literature. The Conclusion asserts that the monstrous vegan is more than simply an interesting facet of literary history. The monstrous vegan offers a vital way of re-conceptualizing veganism in the present moment, a way of thinking through the complex coming together of utopianism and insufficiency that inhere in vegan modes of being in the world. The monstrous vegan provides an apt figuration for such complexities, as a composition of hybrid remains that resists fixed or stable meaning. It provides also a way of thinking about veganism through literature, and acknowledges the discursively constructed nature of ethical identities more broadly. The re-conceptualization of veganism through the monstrous is of urgent necessity in a world under threat from ecological collapse.