We can’t settle for normality : Towards feminist monster studies

Abstract

The present, global moment arguably requires a shift in addressing issues concerning the “normal”. We understand the normal not only as the general, the common, and the standard, but also as that which embodies social and cultural legitimacy, carrying the underhanded, invisible power that tells you that “what is normal is also right” (Hacking, 1990, 160). The COVID-19 pandemic propelled important debates about how a persistent rhetoric of “returning to normal” effectively shifts heightened awareness of different types and degrees of vulnerability and marginalisation to calls for “normality”, belonging and familiarity, for example relating to social reproduction (Stevano, Ali and Jamieson, 2020) and accessibility (Cole, 2016; Goggin and Ellis, 2020; Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2022). In this chapter, we want to draw attention to how the very notion of normality always operates according to a perceived majority. As monster studies teaches us, the monster is historically and culturally positioned as opposite, outskirt, abnormal (Haraway, 1992; Cohen, 1996; Shildrick, 2022; Davies, 2016). But can the figure of the monster also help us to move beyond this established dichotomy between the familiar and the unknown? What is at stake for the relationality between normality and the monster as they are currently being imagined?