- Monstruos, atrofias y deseo en “Marat-Sade” de Florencia Abbate - Néstor Ponce
This article approaches the story "Marat-Sade," by the Argentine writer Florencia Abbate from two perspectives: political and aesthetic. The essay begins by observing the notion of the monster throughout the history of neoliberalism in order to highlight the economic criteria that governed Argentine society in the 1990s. From there, this piece studies Abbate's story in order to highlight the structural and narratological procedures that allow the author to have the critical distance needed to observe the monstrosity of society.
- Monstruos, mutantes y contra-gestación : Promesas naturales, de Oliverio Coelho - María A. Semilla Durán
Between the futuristic novel, sciences fiction and the fantastic genre, Promesas naturales by Oliverio Coelho builds a suffocating universe. An omnipotent and distant State classifies individuals from the day they were born, distribute themselves selectively in space and excludes all those who do not meet the requirements. Bernina, the protagonist, has been torn from her native space to which she tries to go back. Her strolling allows the representation of these world-spaces, inhabited by hybrid or monstrous characters that represent a hyperbolic condensation of certain tendencies of society which lie within the framework of the globalized capitalism. We will study the symbolic implications of the vacilación de la forma (the hesitation of form) or of the deformity and all its variations. Monstrosity opens interstices at the surface of what is represented, through which humour, parody and irony penetrate in the hybrid body of the text, denuding and establishing not only the precariousness of the being but also the precariousness of its representation.
- La monstrueuse perfection : l'illustration poétique de XXY - Eva Tilly
Alex, protagoniste principal du film XXY, réalisé par Lucía Puenzo et sorti en salle en 2007, apparaît comme un type particulier de monstre. Nous nous attachons dans ce travail à proposer une analyse de ce film en en soulignant le caractère poétique et symbolique. Si la réalisatrice s'est inspirée d'une nouvelle de Sergio Bizzio qui traite de l'éveil à la sexualité d'une jeune fille qui souffre d'une « ambiguïté génitale », il nous semble que le sujet abordé dans la « recréation » cinématographique propose une perspective plus ample que celle des premiers émois sexuels d'une adolescente. Les espaces et les éléments contribuent à rappeler au spectateur la théorie de l'androgynie première de l'être humain. L'eau, aussi bien l'océan que la pluie, et les paysages côtiers jouent un rôle symbolique primordial dans la poétique de l'œuvre. Les personnages, baignés dans un camaïeu de bleus et de gris, semblent attendre un événement. Les tortues marines, omniprésentes, apparaissent comme des animaux métaphoriques dont il conviendra d'éclairer la signification. Quelle est donc la finalité de la mise en scène de ce « monstre » au sein d'un décor polysémique, au sein d'un groupe de personnages qui ne semblent exister que parce qu'il existe ?
Alex, the main protagonist of XXY, the film directed by Lucia Puenzo and released in 2007 ; looks like an unusual kind of monster. This article proposes to analyse this film by looking at its poetical and symbolic load. If the film director drew her inspiration from a short story by Sergio Bizzio that deals with the sexuals awakening of a young girl who suffers from “genital ambiguity”, it seems that the topic chosen by its cinematpgraphic “recreation” offers a broader perspective than one focusing of the first sexual stirrings of a teenage girl. Spaces and elements are there to remind the viewer of the theory of the primeval androgyny of the human being. Water, just like the ocean and the rain, and the coastal landscapes, plays a seminal part in the poetics of the work. The characters, bathed in a monochrome of blues and greys, seem to be waiting for something to happen. The omnipresent turtles look like metaphorical animals whose meaning needs to be unveiled. What then is the ultimate goal of the staging of this “monster” in a polysemous environment, in the midst of a group of characters who only seem to derive their existence from hers ?
- Monstruos cinematográficos en dos películas argentinas contemporáneas : Un muro de silencio de Lita Stantic y Los Rubios de Albertina Carri - Elodie Hardouin
This work aims to study the films Un muro de silencio (A wall of silence) by Lita Stantic and Albertina Carri's Los rubios (The blond people) released in Argentina respectively in 1993 and 2004. The present analysis shows how the cinematic resources used by the directors engender multifaceted monstrous hybrid visual forms. Mirages in the case of Stantic and doppelgängers for Carri, these resources represent the complex and multiple identities of the families of the dissapeared during the dictatorship in Argentina.
- Escritores, monstruo y supervivencia (César Aira, Daniel Guebel, Sergio Bizzio) - Marie Audran
In a context that raises the issue of the value of actual literature, César Aira suggests to establish the procedure as an avant-garde alternative literary survival. In this article, we start from César Aira's monster's definition as the figuration of the procedure of a writer that allows him to survive. I suggest reading two novels: Derrumbe of Daniel Guebel and El escritor comido of Sergio Bizzio from this definition to analyze how the monster is constructed as an agent of survival in today's Argentina narrative.
- Mujer-serpiente en México. De Cihuacóatl a Lukas Avendaño - Gloria Luz Godínez Rivas
The snake plays tow opposite roles in the origin of myths of what's believed : the Judaeo-Christian, where the slithering animal is the cause of sin and shame, and the Mexica, where the snake is beginning of life, fertility, birth and health. In both myths the woman is closely linked to the snake. In the Tenochca myth, the snake-woman, well known as Cihuacóatl, allows to recreate a series of marks of otherness in our culture : touch, surface, desire, seduction, slithering instinct, change of skin and forked tongue. This last notion, the divided tongue, bring us the well known historic person called La Malinche, a woman translator who makes it possible “to understand” (destinated to misunderstanding) between Mexican native Americans and Spanish in the Conquest of Nueva España. La llorona, or The Weeper, popular monster in Mexico, appears as an urban legend and also as a cultural merchant makes the union between Cihuacóatl and La Malinche. For detonate the subversive force of the snake-woman, we make the analysis of Lukas Avendaño, an homosexual Mexican native performer who poses naked with a lizard, in his community there are three sexs: men, women and muxes.
- Pandémie zombie. Monstres et mystères de Luis Felipe Fabre - Nathalie Galland Boudon
Avec Poemas de terror y de misterio (Oaxaca, Almadía, 2013), quelque chose dérape et fait glisser au-delà de lui-même le champ de la poésie : alors sorte de terrain vague volontiers nocturne où se retrouve l'écriture poétique, tendue par les motifs du roman noir, entre fait divers racoleur et épisode de série B. Là, le lieu du poème est un terreau cauchemardesque où surgissent morts vivants et autres visages post-humains dans le rectangle de la page, qui est aussi celui de la pellicule filmique souvent convoquée, ou du trou en terre. Véritable archéologie de la peur qui fouille les possibilités du texte poétique à ses marges triviales, le recueil met en branle un texte-performance qui dit l'épouvante face à l'irrépressible pandémie de morts du Mexique contemporain. Nous interrogeons ici cette puissance de contagion de la terreur, qui fait de la figure du monstre la seule latence du monde. Une terreur mortifère qui se propage et gagne tout l'espace, espace intime ou tissu social déjà en décomposition, lieu du poème aussi, excavation-palimpseste, réservoir d'une nécro-écriture où irradient les hantises du présent.
In Poemas de terror y de misterio (Oaxaca, Almadia, 2013), the poetic field crumbles down, gives away and slips out of its own self – it is no longer a sort of nocturnal wasteland where the poetical writing welcomes the motifs of the Gothic novel, wavering between enticing trivial events and B series episodes. The place of the poem here becomes in turns a nightmarish ground excavating zombies and other post-human faces from the rectangular page, but also the haunting image of the film reel or the grave. Acting as an archaeologist of fear digging out the possibilities of the poetical text until its crudest margins are exposed, this collection builds a performance-text voicing the horror of modern Mexico's irrepressible death pandemic. In this article, we intend to enhance such powerfully spreading terror which only preserves the latent figure of the monster. This deadly terror spreads out, invades all spaces – from the intimate realm and the gradually decaying social space, to the place of the poem itself which appears as a palimpsest-excavation and the source of a necro-writing radiating the obsessive fears of the present.
- El monstruo colonizador y el monstruo liberado en la obra de Glauber Rocha y del Grupo Cine Liberación - Ignacio del Valle Dávila
The Latin American film projects of cultural decolonization in the 1960s and 1970s used to dialogue with the vernacular traditions while were beginning aesthetic changes in the national cinemas. The movies and the theoretical manifests of this period have been characterized by the refusal of the universal values of the aesthetic Eurocentric models. Affected by Fanon, filmmakers such as Glauber Rocha and Cine Liberación group have denounced and have resisted the North American and European cultural penetration. The uncritical incorporation of occidental cultural values has been seen as an “imperialist” imposition supported by the national bourgeoisies. In Argentina, the cultural penetration has been described by Cine Liberación in The Hour of the Furnaces (1968) as a “monstrosity dressed like a beauty”. Moreover, Rocha has assigned the nature of monstrosity to the assimilation of the occidental aesthetic norm: “official monsters of the culture”. According to Rocha and Cine Liberación, the “monster” also is the “imperialism” and the national oligarchies. In both cases, there is an inversion of the nineteenth oligarchic speeches that used to stigmatize the “other” – that means, the mestizo, the black people or the indigenous – as a wild or an uncivilized. In the other hand, these filmmakers have claimed the identity of themselves as the “other” or the “monster” of the hegemonic speech.
- Le masque de Gorille dans le carnaval contemporain de Cayenne : résurgences et dépassements des monstruosités historiques - Blodwenn Mauffret
Le carnaval de Cayenne est un phénomène festif issu du fait colonial. Les masques traditionnels s'inscrivent dans une histoire marquée par la violence et la monstruosité sociale (exil, esclavage, violence, métissage forcée, ségrégation, idéologie raciste et aliénation assimilationniste). Le masque de Gorille est une résurgence de ces figures traditionnelles. Il est un masque fort prisé de la jeunesse cayennaise et de ce qu'on nomme aujourd'hui les touloulou sales, sorte de carnaval « à-côté », de carnaval « underground ». A travers l'effroi, le rire et le sexe, le masque de Gorille s'ancre dans une tradition du monstre carnavalesque cayennais et tente de résoudre les contradictions de la société créole contemporaine fondée historiquement sur l'hybridation et la négation de l'humanité. Le Gorille est le reflet des terreurs inconscientes et surtout l'annonce d'un changement de normalité. Le carnaval comme devancement des mœurs, comme utopisation du monde fait son œuvre. L'individu recherche soit la possibilité de découvrir les capacités du moi à refuser l'obéissance aveugle, la soumission irréfléchi au travail salarial et précaire soit la possibilité de découvrir une sexualité et un désir libéré des chaînes de l'histoire, des traumatismes de l'esclavage.
The Cayenne carnival is a festive phenomenon which has developed from the colonial fact. Traditional masks are part of an abusive and social monstrosity (exile, slavery, violence, forced miscegenation, segregation, racism and alienation assimilationist ideology). The Gorilla mask is a resurgence of these traditional figures. It is a very popular mask of Cayenne young and what is now called the touloulou dirty, kind of carnival "perk" or "underground" carnival. Through fear, laughter and sex, the Gorilla mask is rooted in a tradition of the Cayenne carnival monster and attempts to resolve the contradictions of Creole society historically based on hybridization and the negation of humanity. The Gorilla is a reflection of unconscious fears and especially the announcement of a change of normality. Carnival as acceleration of manners, as utopization of the world is at work. The masker is looking for either the opportunity to discover the capabilities of the Self to refuse blind obedience, unthinking submission to the wage and precarious work, or the possibility of discovering a sexuality and a desire free from the chains of history, of slavery trauma.
- Leopardo al sol : la monstruosidad desvelada de la Colombia del narcotráfico - Françoise Bouvet
Through a process of revenge opposing two clans of drug traffickers, Laura Restrepo's novel Leopardo al sol, shows us a portrayal of the new society that emerges in Colombia with the massive development of the drug economy in the 80s. In this society marked by the cult of money and violence, the monstrous actions are becoming more numerous. We will see that behind the capos, these obvious but ambiguous monsters of violence, other characters are hidden, which can be as monstrous as them. From the women of the clan, apparently outside the reach of violence, to the average citizen, the entire society will end up revealing a monstrous aspect, on a physical, moral or psychological level. Laura Restrepo will lead us to consider if this monstrosity is rooted in the human nature itself or in the nascent society of drug trafficking.
- Mitos de creación : los monstruos del rosismo en la prensa de los salvajes unitarios - Diego A. Jarak
Who create monsters? Why? What is behind this creation? In other terms, analyzing some « monstrous » figures, we will try to understand some of the complex processes that leads to a certain representation of world. The « monster » as a synthesis of a way of seeing the world, the artist behind this creation and the world that rises behind this creation.
- La « máquina teratológica » en el Facundo de Sarmiento - Andrea Torrano
This article realizes a biopolitical interpretation about Facundo (1845) around the monstrosity of two figures: Facundo Quiroga and Juan Manuel de Rosas. Sarmiento exhibits a tension between civilization and barbarism; a tension, that far from eliminate the barbarism, includes it as an « inclusive exclusion ». The conflict between civilization and barbarism can be read at the light of, what Giorgio Agamben termed, the « anthropological machine » –which produces humanity- and of, what we called, the « teratological machine » –which produces monstrous bodies and subjectivities. Sarmiento's narrative operation consists in showing Quiroga and Rosas as monsters, as the negative reverse of the civilized.
- Civilizar por el horror - Diego Fernando Guerra
Within the foundation of modern Argentina, the dialectic between « monstrous » and « normal » often worked as a metaphor of the civilization-barbarity confrontation. From 1870 decade the development of « hygienic » funerary practices like cremation was a central component of the sanitarian public policies and the emergence of social control devices. In that context, the exhibition of the dangers and horrors linked to the human corpse and its decomposition became a central topic of the cremationist rhetoric, which appealed to the imaginary of monstrous in order to create a public consciousness on the sanitary risks derived from funerary tradition of inhumation. This paper will focus on some aspects of this process, part of the historical transformations of the visual and its insertion on the XXth century mass culture, but also linked to the collective fears and taboos inspired by corpses, bacteria, worms and revenants within the cultural industry.
- Hermafroditas y otros monstruos en Marosa di Giorgio - Karen Saban
Scholarly Papers point out the eccentricity of the Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio as well as the difficulty to classify her person or her work in any poetic or esthetic tradition. I propose that this enormous difficulty to locate or understand Marosa di Giorgio and even the uncertainty when choosing the hermeneutical tools that could allow reading her work lie in the Monstrous of her literature. I understand the Monstrous not as an aesthetic category, but a cultural one. In this article I track the presence of Monsters or of the Monstrous in the storybooks Misales (1993) and Camino de las pedrerías (1997) and propose reading them in three different levels that also coincide with three possible definitions of Monstrosity : 1. The monstrous body, 2. The monstrous behavior and 3. The monstrous language.
- Les monstres du péronisme - Moira Cristiá
Toute société et tout groupe social crée leurs propres monstres, des créatures anormales qui provoquent la peur ou simplement le refus. Les différents courants du péronisme des années soixante-dix inventent également les leurs, dans le cadre d'un climat d'intolérance politique et de forte violence. Dans cet article, nous cherchons à identifier ces figures rejetées à travers l'étude de fictions illustrées, notamment des bandes dessinées publiées dans la revue de la Jeunesse péroniste Doña Robustiana, mais en évoquant également des caricatures tirées d'autres publications. Ces vignettes, utilisant l'humour pour alléger la tension, s'appuient sur le mythe politique du péronisme et font appel au plaisir du rire pour critiquer leurs adversaires. Nous proposons dans ce travail des pistes de réflexion sur la construction d'un imaginaire de la monstruosité, associé, dans ces documents, à l'immoralité et à l'impérialisme.
Every society or social group creates its own monsters, abnormal creatures that provoke fear or just contempt. The different currents of Peronism of the 70's also invent their own, during a period of strong violence and political intolerance. This paper aims to identify them by analyzing illustrated fictions, particularly comics of the Peronist Youth's magazine Doña Robustiana, but also evoking some cartoons of other publications. These drawings, using humor to ease tension, are based on the political myth of Peronism and rely on the relief of laughter to criticize their opponents. This article will propose some lines of thinking about an imaginary of what is monstrous, usually associated in these documents with immorality and imperialism.
