Analysis of the Monster Culture (Seven Theses) by J.J. Cohen

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen articulates the monstrous dialect by remarking on its proliferation during the techno and media culture age and the ubiquity of the Frankenstein syndrome. Cohen highlights seven theses that depict the characteristics of the monster and how its manifestation is exposed. The article deviates from the previous modes of cultural studies. Cultures have different ways in which they carry out their activities; as such, the writer highlights the need for understanding them through their monsters. The author describes seven elements within the essay that hypothesizes the relation between the monster and the culture. The theses offer an understanding of the particular cultural moments through which the monster is illustrated.

In many societies, the monsters are a personification of a cultural instance. According to the first thesis, as a cultural body, a monster does not represent what it seems. The writer notes that the monster’s body is a character that incorporates the aspects of fear, anxiety, desire, and ataractic fantasy that offer them mysterious independence. The author compares the space occupied in culture by the monster's body with the Derrida's familiar chasm of difference. The monster implies something different from what is known as it is shown to inhabit the disparity between the time of disruption that caused it and the period into which it is time-honored to be reborn.

The second thesis explains the monster’s ability to break away from a particular place only to resurface elsewhere. Over the previous times, the monsters have found their place repeatedly in the society. Monsters can be explored and comprehended following the social and historical characteristics of culture such as the common gender issues. The relations that generate the monsters always change. It is important to review every time a monster reappears against the current social relations.

In the third theses, the Monster is the Harbinger of category crisis. The monster refuses characterization due to its ability to appear and reappear hence making it difficult to apprehend its status. The monster’s body is incoherent with the normalcy and expectations of the societal concerns. The thesis conveys the point that monsters are different from each other and difficult to understand. The monsters slip away hence making it difficult to categorize them within the various categories. In addition, monsters change concerning the demands of people across a particular region. The fourth thesis highlights the existence of the monster in the gates of difference. The author depicts that monsters are born out through cultural differences. The amplification of cultural difference into monstrous peculiarity is familiar. In the fifth thesis, the monster policies borders of the possible, the monster is a counsel against potential exploration that hinders sexual, geographical, and sexual mobility. The monster restricts the societal space in which humans can move as it enforces the law of exclusion.

The sixth thesis regards the fear of the monster as a kind of desire. It highlights that concern amongst individuals in a culture is not only a kind of hope but also rather a form of freedom. Monsters are depicted as creatures that cause panic and fear among the people who interact with them in their cultures since they can change their appearance and traits, which form a good source of power amongst individuals. Lastly, the thesis portrays monsters as creatures that learn their ways of life from the very humans within their reach. In case we try to get rid of them, they reform and come in ways that are more different.

Finally, Cohen’s theses imply that monsters are half animals and half creatures that do not fit into the social system of the human existence and which can prevent us from being defined as coherent species. Throughout the essay, the author highlights the need to appreciate the monsters in our cultures and the role they play in defining our cultural status of existence. It illustrates that the same creatures that we make or formalize to exist among us are the same animals that come to haunt our ways of life thus creating fear and discomfort amongst us.