El monstruo como máquina de guerra

To think about the monster is an exercise both challenging and controversial, crossed by more questions and ambiguities than the subject seems to suggest at first glance. Hence, Mabel Moraña articulates around this figure, hidden behind allegories, metaphors and hyperbolées, the multiple perspectives of Philosophy, Art History, Cultural Criticism and Anthropology. It also offers a broad analysis of the topics of anomaly, corporeality, terror, and the sublime, delving into the innumerable meanings of the monstrous in Western culture from figures and canonical texts (Frankenstein, Dracula...) to versions reformed by popular culture, freak-shows, cinema and contemporary literature.

Starting from a revision of the meanings of monstrous in Marx, Freud, Foucault, and other pillars of Western thought, the study ventures into the biopolitical interpretation of subjectivity and extends into the fields of belief, politics and sociology. Mythical monsters, vampires, zombies, cyborgs and pishtacos are interrogated as a sign of crisis and an announcement of epistemic transformations with strong ethical, aesthetic and ideological implications.

El monstruo como máquina de guerra was translated into English by Andrew Ascherl, available here.