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Monstous Figurations. Notes for a Feminist Reading

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Monstous Figurations. Notes for a Feminist Reading TESIS DOCTORAL Monstrous Figurations. Notes for a Feminist Reading Autor: Virginia Fusco Director/es: Carmen González Marín DEPARTAMENTO DE HUMANIDADES: FILOSOFÍA , LENGUAJE Y LITERATURA (ÁREA DE FILOSOFÍA) Getafe, diciembre de 2015. TESIS DOCTORAL MONSTROUS FIGURATIONS. Notes for a Feminist Reading Autor: Virginia Fusco Director: Carmen González Marín Firma del Tribunal Calificador: Firma Presidente: Vocal: Secretario: Calificación: Getafe, de de to Lina, Attilio, Matteo and Goran ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In the course of this intellectual venture, I have received the support and advice of a number of people who made this thesis possible and guided me throughout these years as a PhD Candidate in Madrid. First and foremost, I am deeply grateful to my PhD supervisor, Carmen González Marín. She has been a source of inspiration and has generously provided me with meaningful insights on Feminism and Philosophy. She has been a mentor and a true friend till the end. I would also like to thank Antonio Gómez that has been generously reading this work and invited me years ago to participate in a research seminar during which key questions about monstrosity were raised and then addressed in the present work. Furthermore, this research project has been greatly enriched by countless conversations with a number of colleagues and friends. I would like to especially thank Rosi Braidotti that welcomed my in Utrecht as a visiting scholar at the very end of my project. In the short months she co-supervised me, she made an indelible impression on me, both as a feminist philosopher and as a person. Very special thanks go to Valentina Longo for her faith in me, her feedback and for a number of sleepless nights she spent watching zombies and vampires on the small screen. To Dr. Martinez, Federica Pezzoli and Daniel Walsh for their unfailing help in revising and editing the material at hand. Finally, to Jon for being there. ABSTRACT Human imagination is saturated with monsters. In order to be able to consider the Human, people have developed a very complex set of narratives both in their diverse literary traditions and, even more so, in their folklore. erefore, to study monsters represents a way of exploring the dierent ways in which humans have not only dened themselves but the characteristics that they have attributed to those that were strangers to the human community. In particular, in this game of alterities in which the human stands face to face with his negative mirror image, female monsters have historically occupied a relevant position. Women have been historically represented as the Other in this human/nonhuman dyad. Starting from an etymological approximation to the word monstrum, I have argued that the monster is a complex, multi-layered cultural object that, due to its internal plasticity and its polysemic nature, has acquired over time a number of conicting characteristics. Moreover, (female) monstrous creatures function as double edged devices that reveal the limits of normativity and simultaneously open up a space for dierence to emerge. ese preliminary considerations and nineteenth and twentieth century vampires’ and zombies’ narratives have guided my analysis of a contemporary neo-gothic artefact: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter by Laurell Hamilton. In dialogue with a number of feminist contributions and considering queer notions of uidity and performativity, I will argue that Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter represents a twenty rst century series that questions social norms and envisions worlds of freedom. Keywords: monster, resistance, normativity, liminality, vampire, zombie, race, sexuality, feminism, femininity & masculinity, queer. TABLE OF CONTENTS I M ............................................................................. Female Monstrosity ................................................................................................................................. Self-Reexivity ........................................................................................................................................... Paranoia ....................................................................................................................................................... Outline of this Dissertation ............................................................................................................... Methodology ........................................................................................................................................... GENEALOGY N G M ..................................................................... Reading Monsters through Foucault ..................................................................................................... Turner’s Contribution to the Debate ..................................................................................................... Not Here nor ere: Vampires and Zombies as ‘Liminal’ Creatures .................................... Provisional Conclusions on Monstrosity ............................................................................................ G D ............................................................................................................... Dracula: Notes on the Imperial Construction of Otherness ..................................................... Dracula’s Landscape: ‘Fossils’ and ‘Shadows’ .............................................................................. Lucy Westerna or the Female Malady ................................................................................................... Fin de Siècle Insanity: Some Impressionistic Sketches .......................................................... Mina Harker or a ‘New Woman’ .............................................................................................................. Dracula’s Professional Lady Love ..................................................................................................... Provisional Conclusions on Imperial Otherness ............................................................................ G F ..................................................................................................................... Orientalism and Africanism in the Creation of Haitian Subjects .......................................... A Corpse With No Name: First Horror Stories ............................................................................... From ‘Anti-Negro ought’ to Military Occupation .................................................................... e Classics between Ethnography and Capital Critique: e Magic Island ................... Zombies Go to the Movies .......................................................................................................................... White Zombie: Universal Studios, 1932 ......................................................................................... Background Curtain: Haiti .................................................................................................................. e Bokor, Voodoo and Haitian Alterity ...................................................................................... Preliminary Conclusions on the Rotting Corpse ............................................................................ CARTOGRAPHY P D ................................................................................................................. First Landmark: Scary Sexual Creatures ............................................................................................. Second Landmark: coloured metaphors ............................................................................................. Female Vampires play in the dark ........................................................................................................... A New Vampire Self: Lesbianism as a Site of Resistance ..................................................... On Vampirism: Reections on Nurturing and Devouring ................................................ Re-Signifying the Zombie: on Nationalism and Identity .......................................................... From Black Shame to Black Pride: Provisional Conclusions on the Re-Signied Undead ..................................................................................................................... CROSSROADS O C L ................................................................................................................. Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter/Zombie Queen................................................................................ Locating Mestiza: a Cartography .......................................................................................................... Anita Blake between Anzaldua’s Mestiza and Africanism ....................................................... Dominga Salvador versus Anita: Whiteness Saves You, Chica .............................................. Provisional Conclusions on Whiteness and Otherness ............................................................. T R B B ........................................................................ e Hard and the So Man: a eoretical Approach ................................................................. Richard Zeeman: Moving towards Hardness .................................................................................. Badinter, Feminist Fiction and Androgyny ....................................................................................
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