Dance Chronicle

Activating the Monstrous in Dance Studies: Thinking and Moving with the Monster

Scholarly discourse on monsters and monstrosity comes from a plethora of disciplines, including Philosophy (Asma 2009), Theater and Performance Studies (Chemers 2018; Chemers and Santana eds. 2022, 2026; Santana 2018; Schneider 2012), Psychoanalysis (Kristeva 1980; Hamilton 2020), Feminist Film Studies (Creed 1993, 2022; Harrington 2018), Gender, Queer, and Women’s Studies (Halberstam 2007; Stryker 2024), and Disability Studies (Garland-Thomson 1996; Shildrick 2002), as understandings and conceptions of monstrosity range far and wide and are difficult to contain. Much of the scholarship coagulates around the seminal work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen titled “Monster Theory: Seven Theses” (1996), which defined some core pillars of the discourse that has since come to be known as Monster Theory. Some core tenets include recognizing a monster’s cultural specificity, its difference (and perceived Otherness), its liminality, its ability to unsettle pre-established understandings and to push the boundaries of possibility, and its elusiveness. Monster Theory (and Monsters) are adaptable and polymorphous, as suggested by the burgeoning scholarship on the topic. There are the monsters we are all familiar with, either from local lore or from cinematic representations such as werewolves, zombies, and vampires. Each of them captures a distinct chronotope and represents a specific type of human anxiety or sociopolitical concern. For instance, in its inaugural appearance, Godzilla embodied the fear of nuclear catastrophe, whereas the figure of the zombie is a malleable monster engaging issues ranging from capitalism (McNally 2012) to the transatlantic slave trade (Lauro 2015), and continuously expanding to encompass new meanings, including the threat of ecological disaster or political extremism. Conversely, there are those monsters that remain unseen, yet present no less of a threat. They lurk in the shadows like invisible hegemonic and oppressive structures-such as the grotesque body of the postcolony (Mbembe 2001) - or haunt us like conditions of precarity in a climate of austerity. No matter their shape or form, the presence of a “monster” calls into question our epistemological worldviews and asks us to acknowledge the failures of our systems of categorization (Weinstock 2020). As a theoretical framework, the monster deliberately resists and challenges normativity, a characteristic it shares with aspects of Queer Theory and Crip Theory (Johnson & McRuer 2014; Kafer 2013; McRuer 2006). Weaving all these threads together, we propose an expanded understanding of monstrosity as a cultural construct through which embodiment, ability, and difference are negotiated and contested, while also foregrounding alternative forms of knowledge production and ways of knowing. Feminist theorist and disability scholar Margrit Shildrick (2002) argues that the monster unsettles normative ideals of bodily integrity, autonomy, and self-sufficiency. Inspired by this observation, we propose viewing the monster/monstrous as a site that might expose the vulnerability, interdependence, and relationality that underpin all human embodiment, rather than serve as a marker of radical otherness. This perspective also resonates with Bakhtin's (1984) notion of the grotesque body, characterized by excess, transformation, and transgression of fixed boundaries. We also follow in the footsteps of performance and theater studies research (Chemers 2018, Chemers and Santana eds. 2022, 2026; Santana 2018) that has begun exploring the various underpinnings and applications of Monster Theory (ranging from historical, to social, cultural, post-colonial, gendered, utopic, etc. lenses) in dialogue with performance. In many of these texts, monster theory is understood as “located primarily, if not exclusively, in bodies” (Chemers 2018, 6), yet it is also acknowledged that existing scholarship frequently prioritizes the semiotic body instead of attending to the materiality of embodied experience. We seek to uncover the embodied, material, and corporeal facets of Monster Theory that have heretofore remained underexplored and to bring them into conversation with dance studies. Approached through a dramaturgical lens, monstrosity offers a way of engaging with questions of interdependence, transformation, hybridity, excess, vulnerability, and processes of becoming in dance and performance. It also provides a critical framework for examining contemporary conditions of political and social crises, the resurgence of far-right ideologies, ongoing conflicts and wars, and the production of exclusion and otherness. For dance studies, engaging with monstrosity is not merely a matter of representation, but an invitation to rethink how bodies move together, how relations are choreographed, and how alternative futures might be imagined.

Possible topics for submission include, but are not limited to:

• What is monstrous in dance studies/performance today in terms of realities, working conditions, socio-political conditions, or the monstrous as alternative aesthetics?
• If we consider hegemonic systems as monstrous, then how might performances or practices actively challenge them, engage them, and/or propose frameworks for dismantling them?
• How might monstrosity manifest as a site of agency, and what are the implications of such an association? How is this agency embodied and performed?
• How might monsters be brought to life through choreographic and dramaturgical choices?

• How are monsters embodied? What kind of movement qualities are used to evoke the monstrous?

• If dance dramaturgy is conceived as a practice of collective inquiry within the performing arts, what questions might emerge from thinking through the figure of the monster?
• How might monstrosity operate as a dramaturgical principle in dance and performance?
• How do dance practices and dance dramaturgies engage with processes of transformation, hybridity, excess, (il)legibility, or becoming that have historically been associated with monstrosity?
• How might we think about monstrosity as a politics of care and affect within different dance settings/contexts?

Bibliography

Asma, Stephen T. 2009. On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Oxford University Press.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Chemers, M. Michael. 2018. The Monster in Theater History: This Thing of Darkness. Routledge.

Chemers, M. Michael, and Analola Santana, eds. 2022. Monsters in Performance: Essays on the Aesthetics of Disqualification. 1st edition. Routledge.

—. 2026. Monstrous Utopias: Performance and the Radical Possibility of Hope. New York:

Routledge.

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. 1996. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Creed, Barbara. 1993. The Monstrous-Feminine : Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.—. 2022. Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema. New York: Routledge.

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, ed. 1996. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York University Press.

Georgelou, Konstantina, Efrosini Protopapa, and Danae Theodoridou, eds. 2017. The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance. Amsterdam: Valiz.

Hansen, Pil, and Darcey Callison, eds. 2015. Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement.

Hamilton, Jenny. 2020. "Monsters and Posttraumatic Stress: An Experiential-Processing Model of Monster Imagery in Psychological Therapy, Film and Television." Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7, no. 1: 7.

Halberstam, Jack. 2007. "Of Monsters, Creatures, and Other Queer Becomings." Peer English 2: 73–82

Harrington, Erin. 2018. Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror. Routledge.

Johnson, Merri Lisa, and Robert McRuer. 2014 "Cripistemologies: Introduction." Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 8, no. 2: 127-147.

Kafer, Alison. 2013. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. Columbia University Press.

Kuppers, Petra. 2003. Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge. London: Routledge.

Lauro, Sarah Juliet. 2015. The Transatlantic Zombie: Slavery, Rebellion, and Living Death. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press

Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.

McNally, David. 2012. Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

McRuer, Robert. 2006. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York University Press.

Santana, Analola. 2018. Freak Performances: Dissidence in Latin American Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Schneider, Rebecca. 2012. "It Seems As If...I Am Dead: Zombie Capitalism and Theatrical Labor." TDR: The Drama Review 56, no. 4 (Winter): 150–62.

Shildrick, M. (2002). Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self. London: Sage.Stryker, Susan. 2024. When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader. Edited by McKenzie Wark. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

The Care Collective. 2020. The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence. London: Verso.