Narrative Performance in the Contemporary Monster Story

Author(s): Daniel Punday

Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 97, No. 4 (Oct., 2002), pp. 803-820
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3738613
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NARRATIVE
CONTEMPORARY

PERFORMANCE
MONSTER

IN

THE

STORY

has come to recognize

the signal imRecently
literary and cultural criticism
a
of
of
in
and
we
have
seen
the
culture,
body
flourishing
constructing
portance
of the body. One of the most traditional
articles and books on representations
ways that a writer can explore society through the body is by telling a monster
serve to challenge
that literary monsters
story. Critics have long recognized
and gaps.
of society by revealing its tensions,
the homogeneity
inconsistencies,
with
Contemporary
theory, as well as popular culture, is clearly in sympathy
the monster story's goal of revealing social disunity through bodily multiplicity.
More than ever we are aware of our bodies as constructions
dependent
upon
within literary criticism of
The popularity
and social expectation.
technology
Donna Haraway's claim that we are all today 'cyborgs' existing within and concircuits is only a reflection of the larger
structed by many different information
social interest in images of the synthetic,
heterogeneous
body. One witty statement of our thinking about the body is Max Apple's short story 'Free Agents'
(1983), in which the author's internal organs decide to leave him, suing for
to the highest bidder. They issue a press release:
their right to sell themselves
'The so-called
one-life
ruling [. . .] has for an entire decade been
one-body
The star surgeons traipse
based upon false medical, legal, and moral evidence.
by moving organs from one body to
through the land making big reputations
another. An average John Doe might have a new heart, a fresh kidney, pints
tooth if the dentists have their way, and you
of alien blood, even an engrafted
the organs are treated as so much meat.'1 Apple's
know they will. Meanwhile,
gland as
story of the court case that will decide this issue (with the pituitary
shows just
the judge, and the organs of famous people as the jury) humorously
is the disunity of the body.
how widely recognized
culture has accepted the disunity of the body in a way
That contemporary
makes the monster story curiously irrelevant. For if we recognize that we are all,
of independent
like Apple's narrator, 'monsters'
elements, what need
comprised
this disunity? And yet, monsters continue to
have we for stories that foreground
inspire writers and to attract readers. Even leaving aside the monsters of popular
bodies have consistently
with monstrous
horror fllm and fiction, characters
of Italo
fiction. We think, for example,
in 'serious'
contemporary
appeared
William
The
Ticket
that
77 visconte dimezzato
Calvino's
Burroughs's
(1951),
Shame
Grendel
Salman
Rushdie's
Gardner's
John
(1971),
(1967),
Exploded
(1983), and Alasdair Gray's Poor Things (1992). What cultural 'work', we might
ask, do monster novels do at the end of the twentieth
century? In this article I
writers with the chance
will argue that monster novels provide contemporary
to examine the process of story telling itself.2 I would like to discuss a number
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the International Narrative Conference (Northwestern University) in April 1998 under the title, 'Monster Stories after the "Body Politic"'.
1 'Free
Agents', in Free Agents (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 102-14 (p. 103).
2 This is
not, of course, to suggest that some contemporary novels do not use monstrous bodies
simply as a fact 'given' within the cultures to which they are appealing. We might think, for

804

Narrative

Performance

in the Contemporary

Monster

Story

of contemporary
monster stories, but will primarily focus on three particularly
texts: Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (1984), Salman Rushdie's
significant
The Satanic
Verses (1989), and Katherine
Dunn's Geek Love (1990). What we
is that monster
stories raise important
about the
find, ultimately,
questions
makes the body 'mean' and how that act
agency of literary symbolism?who
supports or undercuts
messages within the novel.
larger socio-political
The Symbolic

Body

As a number of recent critics have noted, before the eighteenth

century the
monster was most often seen as a divine sign intended to convey some message;
link monster to the French term montrery to demonstrate.
these critics frequently
In this sense, monstrosity
is a fact that must be interpreted
by considering
what message it sends. Chris Baldick summarizes
Michel Foucault's
work on
insanity by noting: 'In a world created by a reasonable God, the freak or lunatic
must have a purpose:
to reveal the results of vice, folly, and unreason,
as a
The monstrous
warning [. . .] to erring humanity.'3
body is assured of meaning
within a nexus of traditional
because of its participation
about
assumptions
This is the kind of monstrous
nature and humanity.
sign that Mikhail Bakhtin
in his book on Rabelais,
has explored
where the grotesque
a
body becomes
life
in
of
symbolic
representative
general: 'the grotesque
body is cosmic and
It stresses elements common to the entire cosmos: earth, water, fire,
universal.
air; it is directly related to the sun, to the stars. It contains the signs of the
It reflects the cosmic hierarchy.
zodiac.
This body can merge with various
natural phenomena,
with mountains,
It
rivers, seas, islands, and continents.
can fill the entire universe.'4
The grotesque
or monstrous
body here is made
and mythic resonances.
Barbara
meaningful
by a whole set of philosophical
Maria Stafford has recently noted that monstrosity
was handled in early modern
as a sign that promised
to reveal the hidden truth about
science,
likewise,
human development:
'The paradox of eighteenth-century
genetic research was
that it studied irregular occurrences
in order to discover something
about how
conceived.'5
this scientific
interest, the monstrous
regular organisms
Despite
body remains a simple sign that points back to some deeper error or message.
This monstrous
however, when the body is treated
sign becomes complicated,
as comprised
of independent
elements
and subsystems.
Stafford notes that 'By
the late eighteenth
century the model of the body as an integral whole finally
fell apart' (p. 340), in large part because of a fundamental
shift to seeing bodily
example, of Ben Okri's The Famished Road (New York: Anchor, 1993), which uses a number
of monstrous ghostly bodies simply as part of the mythology that provides the background for
the story. We should not dismiss the possibility that even works like this pick up on the current
trend to use literary monsters to reflect on the nature of storytelling. Okri, for example, associates
the monstrous ghosts, who have entered the world to experience human reality (p. 136), with
storytelling about 'the myths of beginnings' (p. 6).
3 In Frankenstein's Shadow:
Myth, Monstrosity andNineteenth-Century Writing(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1987), p. 10.
4 Rabelais and His World, trans.
by Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1984), P- 318.
5 Body Criticism: Imagining the Unseen in
Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1991), p. 256.

DANIEL

PUNDAY

805

as independent.
For Stafford, recognizing
that the body is made
components
for
of
elements
raises
fundamental
up
independent
interpretational
problems
those who study it: 'One might never arrive at the cumulative
scene, but only
details. The abstract invisible laws for achieving
drown in the unamalgamated
beneath disconnected
were easily submerged
a superior coalescence
empirica'
that the monstrous
recognize
body is
(p. 332). In other words, once scientists
not a simple sign, they need to justify the means by which they explain and
of the body.6 Bakhtin likewise notes that the modern
link the various elements
an
is
as
individual
treated
object, and thus loses most of its links to the
body
This transthat ensure its effortless interpretation.7
broad cultural mythologies
formation
is quite clear in how bodily space is made to serve political rhetoric.
of monstrous
that one traditional
Baldick observes
way that the disharmony
a
is
that
as
is
elements
made
by treating
political sign
meaningful
body
body
the necessity of a unifying political authority (a king) that gives oremphasizing
to the 'body politic'. As Baldick writes, 'When political discord
ganic wholeness
and rebellion appear, this "body" is said to be not just diseased, but misshapen,
monstrous'
abortive,
(p. 14). Yet, even in the doctrine of the body politic we
of the moral point being made by the body. In
begin to see a complication
of the state as
Hobbes gives us his famous definition
Leviathan
(1651) Thomas
'an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for
is
and in which the sovereignty
and defense it was intended;
whose protection
an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates,
and execution,
artificial joints; reward and punishand other officers of judicature
menty by which fastened to the seat ofthe sovereignty
every joint and member is
moved to perform his duty, are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural'.8
Hobbes implies that a disproportionate
body will signify the political disunity
as a monstrous
and thus will function
of a commonwealth,
'sign' that reveals
Hobbes's
ofthe
the political problems to be remedied.
body into parts
analysis
also departs, however, from the simple sign Baldick describes and
and functions
instead treats the body as an inherently
entity made up of distinct
'corporate'
whose relations are very much subject to debate.9 More generally we
elements
can say that as science begins to treat the body as a composite
entity, monstrosity
to explain their methods and assumptions.IO
forces its interpreters
6 Other critics have
suggested that the monstrous body has always embodied the problems of
representation. In particular see Marie-Helene Huet's influential discussion of the monster in
the context of Platonic theories of imitation in Monstrous Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993), pp. 24-27.
7 Bakhtin writes, 'In the modern image of the individual body, sexual life, eating, drinking,
and defecation have radically changed their meaning: they have been transferred to the private
and psychological level where their connotation becomes narrow and specific, torn away from the
direct relation to the life of society and to the cosmic whole. In this new connotation they can no
longer carry on their former philosophicalfunctions' (p. 321).
8
Leviathan; or, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, ed.
by Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), p. 5.
9 For an analysis of this shift in political philosophy see Ernst H. Kantorowicz's discussion of
the creation of a 'polity-centered' social state in The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval
Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 193-272.
10 Our best-known
examples of literary monstrosity reflect exactly this synthetic body. Norma
Rowen has recently argued that exactly this 'synthetic' quality of the Frankenstein monster separates it from past traditions of artificial life. Comparing the monster to earlier models like the

806

Narrative

Performance

in the Contemporary

Monster

Story

Despite this historical shift in the way the monstrous

body is made meaningof literary monsters,
ful, when critics offer interpretations
they often treat the
monster as a timeless literary trope. Critics frequently
flnd in novels like Mary
Frankenstein
the stuff of very effective cultural critique, bringing toShelley's
gether many different elements ofthe culture in the monster's
body for the sake
of revealing problems within the society itself.11 Stephen Bann speaks for many
of these critics when he defines monsters
as objects that exist outside the fixed
of a culture, suggesting
that interest in such 'curiosities'
reflects an
episteme
'It could be argued
attempt to come to terms with epistemological
questions:
that evidence of this kind [i.e. using monsters
in artworks to explore biological
to
a
or
form] simply points
transitional,
unresolved,
quality in seventeenthabout the natural world. Krzysztof
Pomian has defined
century speculations
as an "interim rule" between
of
"curiosity"
religion and science. Phenomena
the type described
of this state of being neimight appear to be symptomatic
ther one thing not the other.'12 Critics thus treat the monster as an embodiment
of postmodern
attitudes
towards difference
and cultural heterogeneity,
often
the
monster
as
that
which
our
of
models
the
celebrating
challenges
everyday
world. In his introduction
to the collection
Monster Theory Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that 'Because of its ontological
the monster notoriously
liminality,
the clash
appears at times of crisis as the kind of third term that problematizes
of extremes.'13
The monster here becomes
a symbol of difference,
of what is
repressed by the dominant culture. As a result, all cultural bodies come to seem
in Cohen's
monstrous
itself becomes
a monster:
defeaturanalysis:
'History
in
of
the
sutures
that
bind its
ing, self-deconstructive,
always
danger
exposing
into a single, unnatural
disparate elements
body' (p. 9). Cohen in many ways
seems to return to an older model of the meaning of monstrosity
by suggesting
that the monster
is a simple sign?in
this case, a sign about the limitations
of our ways of ordering the world. Despite
a great deal of very sophisticated
recent historical work on the monstrous
body in science and culture, then, lit?
erary critics seem to struggle to address the place of these bodies within literary
works. If the hermeneutics
of the monster has been shown to be in question
since the seventeenth
century, its place within a narrative must likewise be radnarrative through the monstrous
ically at issue. The idea of rethinking
body
golem and the automaton, Rowan writes, 'the automaton is made of artificial substances and raises
no expectations that he is human. Frankenstein's monster, assembled out of bits of flesh, becomes
not a machine but something human that has been horribly distorted?an image out of nightmare':
'The Making of Frankenstein's Monster: Post-Golem, Pre-Robot', in The State of the Fantastic: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Fantastic Literature and Film, ed. by Nicholas Ruddick
(Westport, CT: GreenwoodPress, 1992), pp. 169-77 (P- I7?)11 See
e.g. David A. Hedrich Hirsch's essay 'Liberty, Equality, Monstrosity: Revolutioning the
Family in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein', which sees Shelley's Frankenstein as a novel about the
attempt to create a single general man out of culturally diverse materials: 'by scavenging from
dissecting rooms and mortuaries the body parts of myriad individuals, and then confederating
these individual parts into a new, conglomerate mass, Frankenstein [. . .] seeks to bring to life, in
spectacular form, an ideal of le genre humain that transcends the bounds of the individual': Monster
Theory: Reading Culture, ed. by JefTreyJerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1996), pp. 115-40 (p. 116).
12
Stephen Bann, 'Introduetion', in Frankenstein, Creation, and Monstrosity, ed. by Stephen
Bann (London: Reaktion, 1994), pp. 1-15 (p. 4).
13 'Monster Culture (Seven
Theses)', in Monster Theory, pp. 3-25 (p. 6).

DANIEL

PUNDAY

807

remark that 'the

is precisely what Donna Haraway suggests in her well-known
in non-oedipal
narramonsters in cyborg worlds are embodied
most promising
tives with a different logic of repression'.14
Although
literary critics frequently
few have
as a trope for disruption,
appeal to Haraway to define the monster
Haraway's claim that monsters send us back to rethink the
seriously considered
and 'logics' of narrative.
basic mechanisms
in problems
that
been interested
novelists
have particularly
Contemporary
of literary narrative. We can see
monstrous
bodies create for the construction
of giving the monster
the difhculty
writers working
through
contemporary
a clear significance
by turning to Angela Carter's novel Nights at the Circus.
Carter's novel tells the story of Sophie Fevvers, a circus acrobat born with a full
set of wings. Carter wants to use her winged woman both to make a comment
about the freedoms accorded to women, and also to think through the problems
Carter is quite explicit
such freedoms.
of creating a woman who symbolizes
to Fevvers's
later in the novel in drawing our attention
qualities.
symbolic
about a woman in Siberia who is isolated by her community
during
Remarking
Fevvers says 'And once the old world has turned on its axle so that
childbirth,
the new dawn can dawn, then, ah, then! all the women will have wings, the same
as I. This young woman in my arms, whom we found tied hand and foot with
the grisly bonds of ritual, will suffer no more of it; she will tear off her mind
will rise up and fly away.'15 Carter clearly sees her heroine as
forg'd manacles,
an image of the future of women, an image that should allow women to think
the novel Carter uses images of stopped
about their own freedom. Throughout
for women. During her
time to suggest that Fevvers represents a new beginning
who is investigating
with Jack Walser, an American journalist
initial interview
in
with
falls
love
and
who
later
endowment
Fevvers's
her, time seems
physical
Fevvers is associated with such
not to pass (pp. 42-43), and at several moments
stopped time. During her first attempt at flight in the brothel in which she is
raised, she moves a stopped clock in order to climb up onto the mantle of the
time (p. 29).
fireplace, taking the place of this symbol of suspended
living-room
The novel itself ends on New Year's Eve 1899, a fact which is used to suggest
of a new age: 'We're on the cusp, my
Fevvers's
role as marking the threshold
is
another
time-scheme'
tomorrow
(p. 284).
dear,
as a symbol
intends us to take her heroine seriously
While Carter obviously
about the problems that such symbolof female freedom, she is very conscious
ism brings with it. Early in the novel she realizes that learning to fly creates
division between myself and the rest of human?
'irreconcilable
a 'wound'?an
role
that giving up her symbolic
Walser
suggests
ity' (P- 34)- Later, however,
as
has
a
she
'As
a
certain
with
it
woman,
meaning,
symbolic
dangers:
brings
an anomaly, none' (p. 161). In this passage Walser is trying to suggest that
a symbol keeps her human, but Fevvers seems to realize that these
remaining
is clear
two are necessarily
symbolism
separate. The real problem of Fevvers's
when she describes her goals: 'On that bright day, when I am no more a singular
no longer an imagined fiction but
being but, warts and all the female paradigm,
14 'The Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminismin the Late Twentieth
Century', in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge,
15 Nights at the Circus (New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 285.
1991), pp. 149-81 (p. 150).

808

Narrative

Performance

in the Contemporary

Monster

Story

a plain fact?then
he [Walser] will slap down his notebooks,
bear witness to
me and my prophetic
role' (p. 286). Fevvers suggests that her ultimate goal is
simply to become ordinary, yet doing so would clearly violate the symbolism
which has made her stand out and which has ultimately
attracted Walser. As
this passage suggests,
Fevvers is very much aware that she depends on Walser
as the audience to her symbolism.
Fevver describes
her early childhood
in the
brothel as 'my apprenticeship
in being looked aty (p. 23), and suggests that her
whole identity depends on having a spectator that gives her meaning beyond
it is precisely
her symbolic
role that makes Fevvers feel
'plain fact'. Indeed,
whole:
And surely he was here; one of the wooden houses must shelter the young American.
And she would see, once again, the wonder in the eyes of the beloved and become
whole. . . .
'Think of him, not as a lover, but as a scribe, as an amanuensis,' she said to Lizzie.
And not of my trajectory alone, but of yours, too, Lizzie; of your long history of exile
and cunning which you've scarcely hinted to him, which will fill up ten times more of
his notebooks than my story ever did.' (p. 285)
Carter suggests
that Fevvers depends
on Walser to make her 'whole' and to
The significance
of Fevvers's
claim about being whole is
give her meaning.
particularly
easy to see if we note her criticism earlier in the novel about burAs another type of exaggerated
lesque clowning.
body, the clown shares many
of Fevvers's
Fevvers, however, hates
qualities with the symbolism
bird-body.
clowns: 'Don't you know how I hate clowns, young man? I truly think they
are a crime against humanity'
(p. 143). Part ofthe reason that Fevvers dislikes
clowns so intensely
seems to be that they represent
of the
quite the opposite
is described
earlier
unifying symbol that Fevvers sees herself to be. Clowning
in the novel as representing
the 'freedom to juggle with being, and, indeed, with
the language which is vital to our being' (p. 103). This attitude towards identity
and the defined meaning that
clearly contrasts to Fevvers's desire for wholeness
she achieves in Walser's notebooks.
This contrast is especially
clear when the
clowns are described
as 'deconstructing
'At the climax of his turn,
themselves':
about him as if a grenade exploded
everything
having collapsed
it, he starts to
deconstruct
himself. His face becomes contorted
by the most hideous grimaces,
as if he were trying to shake off the very white with which it is coated: shake!
shake! shake out his teeth, shake off his nose, shake away his eyeballs,
let all
self-dismemberment'
go flying off in a convulsive
(p. 117). The clown's willingness to fracture himself into parts is precisely the opposite of what Fevvers
strives for in her relationship
with Walser.
Let us note how the contrast between
Fevvers and the clowns repeats the
bodies in general. Above I suggested
problems with the meaning of monstrous
an inherent split between older forms of body symbolism
based on the representational qualities of the whole and new, scientific methods that sought to account
for the basic elements of monstrous
bodies. It is not difhcult to see precisely the
same opposition
in this novel.16 Fevvers clearly represents the older expectation
of a unified meaning
for the monstrous
the willbody; the clowns exemplify
It is because it fails to note the counter-example of the clowns and Fevvers's feeling about
them that Magali Cornier Michael's discussion of representation in Carter's novel, Angela Carter's

DANIEL

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809

elements and to question how they

ingness to analyse the body into component
relate to each other. More importantly,
Carter helps to suggest why this representational
writers. What Carter discovers
problem fascinates
contemporary
when she considers
in
the meaning of monstrous
bodies are specific problems
how narrative represents
agency. In particular,
Nights at the Circus suggests
that there is an inherent conflict between symbolism
and the representation
of
in
actions.
Fevvers
is
character
a
conventional
possible
meaningful
Although
novelistic
way, she is also very much the product of an author's creative act.
She is, in other words, strangely passive in the meaning that she brings to the
novel. Fevvers's unifying symbolism
certainly seems more capable of making a
'statement'
than the clowns' self-deconstruction.
Indeed,
politically
significant
there is little reason to think that the clowns could accomplish
anything like the
political lesson that Carter associates with Fevvers, since Carter's purpose is to
monstros?
provide an image of a likely future. None the less, their anti-symbolic
the image that
ity points to problems of really taking to heart and implementing
Carter is providing
of female freedom.
With the clowns Carter hopes, I think,
and 'plain
to make readers aware of the gap between symbolic
representation
to the limitations
in Fevver's own symbolism,
fact'. In drawing our attention
that our own goal as readers?in
Carter is suggesting
hoping to create a neat,
for
the
novel's
elements?can
work
symbolic
meaning
key
against her hope of
the
fact'
of
an
alternative
future.
In
other
words, Carter
'plain
representing
while granting her characters a genuine agency.
struggles to create symbolism
We should notice the difference
between
what Carter is accomplishing
by
this conflict
and the types of representational
indeterminacies
emphasizing
to the monster novel. In using a monstrous
usually attributed
body to criticize
her own methods
of symbolism,
Carter seems to follow many contemporary
of the traditional
monster
critics' characterization
story. One of the earliest
of this way of reading literary monsters
is Barbara
and best-known
examples
Diacritics
There Johnson declares the novel
Johnson's
essay on Frankenstein.
to be, in good deconstructive
of texts that are 'texstyle, one of a number
with which they deal'.17 When she
tual dramatizations
of the very problems
of its conturns to Shelley's
overall evaluation
novel, she offers the following
.
be
as
the
of writing
cerns: 'Frankenstein
can
read
the
of
story
experience
[. .]
Frankenstein.
What is at stake in Mary's introduction
as well as in the novel
of a primal scene of creation. Frankenstein
is the description
combines
a mon?
strous answer to two of the most fundamental
one can ask: where do
questions
babies come from? and where do stories come from? In both cases, the scene
is still withheld'
of creation is described,
but the answer to these questions
on
earlier
feminist
describes
Frankenstein
as a
work, Johnson
(p. 7). Building
novel concerned
with creation in general,18 which she extends to the issue of
has become the most comnovelistic
creation as well. This characterization
mon current way of viewing monster novels of all types. What Carter is doing
Nights at the Circus: An Engaged Feminism via Subversive Postmodern Strategies' (Contemporary
Literature, 35 (1994), 492-521) does not see the limitations of symbolism in the novel.
17 Barbara Johnson, 'My Monster/My Self, Diacritics, 12.2 (1982), 2-10 (p. 3).
18 See
e.g. Ellen Moers's influential discussion of Frankenstein as a 'birth myth' in Literary
Women(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976).

810

Narrative

in Nights
interested
narrative
case, to a
the effect
encounters.

Performance

in the Contemporary

Monster

Story

at the Circus is subtly but significantly

different.
Rather than being
in issues of creation in the abstract, Carter is concerned
with how
this
shapes and limits the meaning that she can give to an entity?in
As
a
much
more
on
monstrous
Carter
result,
emphasis
body.
places
of her story and on the political problems that this type of symbolism

The Evolutionary

Body

the paradoxes
and linovels use monsters,
then, to investigate
Contemporary
of narrative. When Carter balances the symbolic
Fevvers against the
mitations
of contemporary
deconstructive
she suggests
the direction
monster
clowns,
an interest in the way that a symbol enters the world of the
novels?towards
reader to provide an image of a real alternative
future. In this contemporary
we glimpse the potential
interest in the 'worldliness'
of novelistic
symbolism19
for a radical reworking of our assumptions
we
about narrative itself. Normally
characters'
actions
assume that narrative offers us a 'message' by subordinating
and even their futures to some overall thematic structure.
Carter's novel hints
at something
different?a
in
which
futures
characters'
might be more
way
quite
than and even somewhat
of the message that the author
important
independent
offers her readers. To explore this radical narrative possibility,
let us consider
another historical
influence
on the modern concept of the body, evolutionary
the representational
problem that we have altheory, which likewise radicalizes
noted.
When
of earlier
Darwin
that
all
are
transformations
ready
argues
species
in
some
a
he
that
creature
is
sense
monster.
creatures,
suggests
every living
Jasia Reichardt notes that our idea of the monster likewise suggests a small but
for a mon?
from past forms: 'The essential
condition
departure
recognizable
it possesses
must not be changed too far.
ster is that the human characteristics
When departure from the norm is complete,
as in a caricature that has forfeited
the result will evoke fear and disgust. Transforming
a person
recognizability,
into a monster is achieved by the exaggeration
of one or two features.'20 If this
of particular
definition
of monstrosity
is correct, evolutionary
mutation
char?
acteristics
is an inherently
monstrous
process. Recent critics have recognized
how the concept of evolution
of
our traditional
definitions
radically challenges
the monster. Eric White argues, for example, that 'evolutionist'
cinema sees all
human forms as monstrous
by virtue of their hybrid nature: 'Such monstrous
be
to figure an evolutionist
on the hu?
can
understood
becomings
perspective
man body as an assemblage
of non-human
That
evolutionist
cinema
is,
parts.
renders the body monstrous
hitherto latent asby, so to speak, re-animating
life that
pects of human nature, the genealogically
prior forms of non-human
19 In
using the term 'worldliness' I have in mind Edward Said's suggestion in The World, the
Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) that literary and cultural
critics need to pay more attention to the fact that 'a text in its actually being a text is a being in
the world' (p. 33). In other words, critics need to think about the work not as a passive object of
interpretation, but as a historical part of the world upon which critics act.
20
Jasia Reichardt, Artificial Life and the Myth of Frankenstein', in Frankenstein: Creation and
Monstrosity, ed. by Stephen Bann (London: Reaktion, 1994), pp. 136-57 (p. 139).

DANIEL

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8l I

constitute
what I'd like to call the menagerie within.'21 As White makes clear,
evolution
monstrous.
implies that the human body is inherently
How does evolution
affect the interpretational
problems ofthe monster? Evo?
lution forces readers to place the monster within a narrative context.
Gillian
in her influential
Beer makes this connection
between narrative and evolution
with time and with change
study Darwin's Plots: 'Because of its preoccupation
and processes
of
evolutionary
theory has inherent affinities with the problems
narrative.'22 The Darwinian
monster is only monstrous
because of the evolu?
to see traditional
tionary moment at which it appears. While we are supposed
as monstrous
literary monsters
by their very nature, evolutionary
thought encourages us to think about how such creatures point to new possible forms of
Nicholas
of
body organization.
Mosley has just this Darwinian
understanding
in mind in his novel Hopeful Monsters (1990). Characters
discuss
monstrosity
the idea of hopeful
monsters:
'They are things born perhaps slightly before
their time; when it's not known if the environment
is quite ready for them!'23
clear that we have to place the monster into context
Mosley makes particularly
or a harbinger
of new human
to decide if it is merely a sign of abnormality
forms. The need to contextualize
the monster obviously
the way
complicates
us to read its significance
that such a creature can carry meaning and encourages
in fundamentally
different ways. Such evolutionary
novels of monstrosity
are
of
an important
monster
fiction.
We
contemporary
subgenre
might think, for
of Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1975), which uses a 'monstrous'
example,
in human
female warrior from the future, Jael, to point towards possibilities
relations.24 Jael clearly represents
one extreme version of female potential;
she
addresses women drawn from several earlier periods:25
explicitly
It took me years to throw off the last of my Pussy-fetters,
to stop being (however
brutalized) vestigially Puss-cat-ified, but at last I did and now I am the rosy, wholesome,
single-minded assassin you see before you today.
I come and go as I please. I do what I want. I have wrestled myself through to an
independence of mind that has ended by bringing all of you here today. I short, I am a
grown woman. (p. 187)
that 'hopeful
monsters'
can play many roles in fiction?not
Russ suggests
alternatives
to the present (it is not at
merely as a way to suggest desirable
an ideal), but also to analyse the
all clear that Russ means Jael to represent
with the futures that it seems to suggest.
present by comparison
21 Eric
White, '"Once They Were Men, Now They're Landcrabs": Monstrous Becomings
in Evolutionist Cinema', in Posthuman Bodies, ed. by Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 244-66 (p. 244).
22 Gillian
Beer, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and NineteenthCentury Fiction, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 5.
23 Hopeful Monsters (New York: Vintage, 1993), p. 71.
24 Jael is described as a monster both because she fails to fit traditional definitions of femininity
('You can't unite woman and human any more than you can unite matter and antimatter': Joanna
Russ, The Female Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), p. 151) and because her body departs from
current bodily forms?she has, for example, hidden claws and metal teeth (p. 181).
25 The women themselves are explicitly offered as variations on the same character whose differences are determined by historical circumstances. Jael remarks, 'Look in each other's faces.
What you see is essentially the same genotype, modified by age, by circumstances, by education,
by diet, by learning, by God knows what' (p. 161).

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Performance

in the Contemporary

Monster

Story

When evolutionary
ideas about the body are brought to bear on narrative,
basic assumptions
about how monster novels are constructed
they challenge
and read. In Galdpagos (1985) Kurt Vonnegut
likewise writes about 'hopeful
in
but
does
so
a
that
more
monsters',26
clearly reveals the narrative probway
lems that come with such an evolutionary
of literary monsters.
understanding
insists on approaching
his characters
less in terms of personal psyVonnegut
or moral choices, and more in terms of the biology that, he claims,
chology
causes their actions. Thus it is late in the novel that he says he will 'trot onstage
the only real villain in my story: the oversize
human brain' (p. 167). While
this passage may seem merely a poetic departure
from our normal ways of
about
moral
Vonnegut
speaking
responsibility,
clearly intends it to be taken
human morality as a re?
Many times during the novel he describes
seriously.
sult of our biological
form. Speaking
from the novel's far-future
perspective,
where humans have evolved into fish, Vonnegut
writes, 'There are still plenty
of hallucinators
to all sorts of things
today, people who respond passionately
which aren't really going on. [. . .] But people like that can't get hold of weapons
now, and they're easy to swim away from. Even if they found a grenade or a
machine gun or a knife or whatever left over from olden times, how could they
ever make use of it with just their flippers and their mouths?' (p. 91). Vonnegut
makes it clear here that the real agents of his story are biological
forms, which
are ultimately
for the actions of his human characters.
responsible
Vonnegut's
rather unusual storytelling
method forces us to read a second narrative above
the level of the usual characters and events, a narrative which provides the real
motivation
and causality for the story. In the process, we are forced to consider
that the monster might be viewed not as a self-contained
entity but as a product
of our reading context.
Donna Haraway suggests
of this approach
something
to the monster when she remarks that cyborgs, often seen as another type of
'have mutated,
in fact and fiction, into second-order
monster,
contemporary
entities like genomic
and electronic
databases
and the other denizens
of the
zone called cyberspace'.27
she
does
Haraway suggests?although,
admittedly,
we might observe not merely concrete humanoid
not elaborate?that
monsters
in the mould of Victor Frankenstein's
creation, but also abstract, microscopic,
or electronic
'monsters'.
Monsters
at their most extreme, then, are the product
ofthe narrative context that readers adopt.28
are interested
in evolution,
narratives
most
Although
many contemporary
demand that we contextualize
the body in order
revealing is when evolution's
to make it meaningful
is integrated
into stories whose main purpose
is not
26
Galdpagos (New York: Delacorte Press, 1985), p. 51.
27
'Cyborgs and Symbionts: Living Together in the New World Order', in The Cyborg Handbook, ed. by Chris Habbles Gray (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. xi-xx (p. xix).
28 The fact that the monster
may in many ways reflect larger narrative forces helps to account
for the occasional use of what we might call abstract monsters in contemporary fiction. Richard
Brautigan's The Hawkline Monster (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1974) is typical of this subgenre.
The monster of Brautigan's title haunts the house of a scientist in the American West at the turn
of the century, and is described very abstractly as a by-product of an experiment known only as
'The Chemicals'. The monster is treated merely as a disembodied malicious force, destroyed only
when the jar containing 'The Chemicals' itself is contaminated. Brautigan's story uses a monster
in an extremely abstract way, in large part treating it as a precondition of the Gothic story formula
that he mocks.

DANIEL

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813

As an example, I would like to turn to Salman Rushdie's

evolutionary.
explicitly
Satanic Verses, a work with no apparent interest in Darwin but with a great deal
of insight into the narrative problems that result from the need to contextualize
Verses tells the story of Gibreel
the monstrous
Farishta,
body. The Satanic
an Anglophile
a star of Indian theological
epic films, and Saladin Chamcha,
shows and
emigre to London who makes his living doing voices for television
are falling from an
As the story opens, Gibreel
and Chamcha
commercials.
by terrorists. Both survive miraculously,
aeroplane that has just been destroyed
a 'monsterization':
Gibreel is turned into the archangel that
but each undergoes
his name alludes to, and Chamcha rapidly acquires devilish horns, hoofs, and
in many ways by his experience,
Gibreel is clearly transformed
tail. Although
we are left to wonder until the
this change remains primarily
psychological:
end of the novel if he may not merely be hallueinating.
Chamcha,
thus, is the
him
we
see
what role
that
and
it
is
of
the
'monster'
novel,
through
primary
itself arises from
novel. Chamcha's
monstrosity
monstrosity
plays in Rushdie's
He leaves his native
to his own ethnic background.
his problematic
relationship
and his early
Bombay as a teen when he is sent to boarding school in England,
of his background.
and the suppression
is a story of assimilation
adulthood
is
the larger point that Rushdie
Chamcha's
way of earning a living suggests
a
Thousand
Voices
is
'the
Man
of
Chamcha
with
this
character.
make
to
trying
and a Voice': 'If you wanted to know how your ketchup bottle should talk in its
if you were unsure as to the ideal voice for your packet of
television
commercial,
crisps, he was your man. He made carpets speak in warehouse
garlic-flavoured
baked beans, frozen peas. On
he did celebrity impersonations,
advertisements,
the radio he could convince an audience that he was Russian, Chinese, Sicilian,
on nationality
later
of the United
States.'29 Rushdie's
the President
emphasis
a matter of
skills are specifically
in this passage makes it clear that Chamcha's
vocal talents to make
ethnic impersonation.
Moreover, in also using Chamcha's
that consumes
that the audience
commercial
suggests
objects speak, Rushdie
of ethnicity
is ultimately
these imitations
treating such people as objects sold
and traded.
involvement
Chamcha's
as a way of emphasizing
Rushdie uses monstrosity
to his ethnic past, and so gives it a positive connotation.
with and connection
in two different ways. First, he is a monster from the
is monstrous
Chamcha
of his family and friends back in Bombay, to whom he appears
perspective
father chastises him: 'Will you
to be 'possessed'
by Western ideas. Chamcha's
spend your life jiggling and preening under bright lights, kissing blonde women
under the gaze of strangers who have paid to watch your shame? You are no son
In a second
of mine, but a ghoul, a hoosh, a demon up from hell' (pp. 47-48).
of
of
ethnic
an
embodiment
itself
is
a
the
monster
otherness,
sense,
simple image
with
other
monsters
a
in
is
for
the
West.
Chamcha
hospital
placed
'foreignness'
where he is told by other inmates that his
shortly after his transformation,
themselves:
is the result of the London authorities
transformation
The manticore ground its three rows of teeth in evident frustration. 'There's a woman
over that way,' it said, 'who is now mostly water-bufTalo. There are businessmen from
The Satanic Verses(New York: Viking, 1989), p. 60.

814

Narrative

Performance

in the Contemporary

Monster

Story

Nigeria who have grown sturdy tails. There is a group of holidaymakers from Senegal
who were doing no more than changing planes where they were turned into slippery
snakes. I myself am in the rag trade; for some years now I have been a highly paid
male model, based in Bombay, wearing a wide range of suitings and shirtings also. But
who will employ me now?' he burst into sudden and unexpected tears. 'There, there,'
said Saladin Chamcha, automatically. 'Everything will be all right, I'm sure of it. Have
courage.'
The creature composed itself. 'The point is,' it said fiercely, 'some of us aren't going
to stand for it. We're going to bust out of here before they turn us into anything worse.
Every night I feel a different piece of me beginning to change. . . .'
'But how do they do it?' Chamcha wanted to know.
'They describe us,' the other whispered solemnly. 'That's all. They have the power
of description, and we succumb to the pictures they construct.' (p. 168)
This long passage makes it clear that monstrosity
the transformarepresents
tion of ethnic 'others' in the eyes of the native British. When Chamcha
is
transformed
into a devil at the outset of the novel, Rushdie
is clearly trying
to dramatize
his ethnic otherization?even
in fact, this otherization
though,
occurred without his recognition
long before. Thus, monstrosity
brings to the
surface problems that already exist, allowing for Chamcha's
with
reintegration
his ethnic heritage.
Rushdie
is able to see monstrosity
so positively
because he believes
that
the body and culture are both inherently
hybrid. Indeed, one of the principal
themes of Satanic
Verses is the issue of unity and diversity.
Once Gibreel has
been transformed
into the archangel,
he begins to dream (hallucinate?)
the
in a
of a monotheistic
story of the birth of Islam. The appearance
religion
culture that is used to having many different
deities provides
much of the
drama for this subplot of the story. One of the men seeking to suppress the new
For that: one one one, his terrifying
religion reflects, 'Why do I fear Mahound?
singularity. Whereas I am always divided, always two or three or fifteen' (p. 102).
A page later, Rushdie makes the 'terror' of such singularity
clearer by noting
the interest that many groups have in keeping the system of morality and law
fiuid: 'Today, female pilgrims
are often kidnapped
for ransom or sold into
of
Sharks
the
concubinage.
Gangs
young
patrol
city, keeping their own kind of
law. It is said that Abu Simbel meets secretly with the gangleaders
and organizes
them all. This is the world into which Mahound
has brought his message: one
one one. Amid such multiplicity,
it sounds like a dangerous word' (p. 103). Here
of the distinct cartels that wield so much power
unity threatens the operation
in Jahilia. In this passage unity seems to be a desirable check to lawlessness,
yet
other sections ofthe book question the desirability
of simple unity. The opening
image of Gibreel and Chamcha falling from the aeroplane emphasizes
hybridity
and transformation:
of
'pushing their way out of the white came a succession
cloudforms,
ceaselessly
gods into bulls, women into spiders,
metamorphosing,
men into wolves. Hybrid cloud-creatures
pressed in upon them' (p. 6). Rushdie
seems to make a generally applicable comment
on the unrecognized
importance
of such hybridity when a minor character remarks on the 'eclectic, hybridized
nature of the Indian artistic tradition'
(p. 70). Rushdie
places his interest in
in the centre of the novel with the relationship
between
Chamcha
hybridity
and Gibreel, who form some sort of heterogeneous
whole. Later in the novel

DANIEL

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815

Rushdie
different
continuous
to create
discovers

entertains
the possibility
that the two represent
'two fundamentally
of
self
Gibreel
the
that
seeks to remain
types
(p. 427),
being
type
despite is reinventions
through acting, and Chamcha more willing
in his life and personality.
at least,
selected discontinuities
Chamcha,
a great deal about himself and his past by experiencing
a dichotomous
with Gibreel.
The importance
of such binary relations
relationship
suggests
in larger, hybrid wholes.
that identity is discovered
one's
through
participation
Like Carter, we can say, Rushdie
that monstrosity
works against
recognizes
within
novel.
But
unlike
Rushdie
embraces
the
rather
Carter,
hybridity
unity
than holding up the unified symbol as the centre of the novel.30
monstrous
Because he treats Chamcha's
body as a hybrid with relations to
traditional
ideas of narrative order. One
others, Rushdie is moved to question
of Satanic Verses is how aware characters are
ofthe most striking characteristics
The inmates' claims to be 'described'
of the issues of storytelling.
suggest that
this
but
Rushdie
makes
the
even more
are
symbolism,
point
they
exploiting
a hero for immigrant
later in the novel when Chamcha becomes
dramatically
in London.
Mishal, a young woman in the house where Chamcha
protesters
hides out in London, remarks, 'You're a hero. I mean, people can really identify
with you. It's an image white society has rejected for so long that we can
really take it, you know, occupy it, inhabit it, reclaim it and make it our own'
This passage in many ways simply repeats the kind of analysis
(pp. 286-87).
above. Mishal is right,
of Chamcha's
of the meaning
body that I conducted
of white attitudes.
At the same
form as a reflection
I think, to see Chamcha's
associate
we find a thematic
device that we would normally
time, however,
are supposed
to 'get' the
with the level of the novel's writer and readers?who
within the
of Chamcha?now
being recognized
by the characters
symbolism
the many different
Rushdie has clearly sought to dramatize
novel themselves.
of Chamcha's
body. This is not to say, as many critics have said
meanings
about literary monsters before, that Chamcha is an image of simple polysemy.31
the way that a symbol like Chamcha is inserted
Instead Rushdie is investigating
not to
'readers'.
He draws our attention
into narrative contexts
by different
function of his characters and narrators.
but to the contextualizing
multiplicity,
here is merely part of the novel's larger
Chamcha's
contextualized
symbolism
controversial
interest in how a story is reshaped by its teller. Indeed, Gibreel's
30 Rushdie's willingness to embrace hybridity may partially depend on his non-Europeanbackground. Indeed, Stafford notes that the distaste for hybrid creatures arose specifically in the
atmosphere of eighteenth-century European rationalism (p. 214). Often works that explicitly depart from European narrative models seem to encounter the narrative dynamics of the monster
that I am describing here as less problematic. Consider, for example, Gerald Vizenor's NativeAmerican novel Bearhart: The Heirship Chronicles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1990). Vizenor's novel deploys a number of hybrid and 'monstrous' creatures, but specifically
challenges us to avoid assigning them simple meaning. At one point, for example, a character notes
that 'We were all part fish and animals in the beginning' (p. 146), and criticizes characters who
turn normal bodies into a 'terminal creed' that hides the fact that 'we are all incomplete' (p. 147).
Vizenor takes the clown as his hero, and suggests more generally how embracing the hybrid body
leads away from simple symbolism.
31 See, for example, Judith Halberstam's discussion of the nineteenth-century grotesque in
Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1985): 'The monster always becomes a primary focus of interpretation and its monstrosity seems
available for any number of meanings' (p. 2).

816

Narrative

Performance

in the Contemporary

Monster

Story

Feroza
such narrative contextualization.
history of Islam is the most important
Jussawalla has noted that Rushdie's
rewriting of the story is part of the Indian
Islamic tradition:
This idea of retelling the story of Islam was the project of many Indian Islamic groups?
such as the Ismailis, the Aga Khanis, the Khodjas, the Bohra?predominant
among the
Muslim community in India, particularly in Bombay, where Salman Rushdie, Saleem
Sinai, Gibreel Farishta, and Salahuddin Chamcha all originate. Their effect on Islam
was a secularizing or broadening one, since many of them as converts to Islam from
Hinduism brought their traditions and in a sense 'Hinduized' Indian Islam. Each of
these sects chose their favorite martyr and recreated the story of the Prophet to make
their martyrs, in Hindu fashion, saints.32
function to
In Chamcha,
however, Rushdie seems to push this contextualizing
an extreme by making him function in many overlapping
narratives, producing
a novel that violates our assumptions
about textual unity.
of Chamcha's
Rushdie's
then, is part of an opencomplication
symbolism,
of narrative. At several points in the story the characters
ended understanding
dreams are
themselves
and each other as fiction. Indeed, Gibreel's
experience
a story unfold: 'Gibreel: the dreamer, whose
very much a matter of watching
that of the camera and at other moments
point of view is sometimes
spectator.
When he's a camera the pee oh vee is always on the move, he hates static shots, so
he's floating up on a high crane looking down at the foreshortened
figures ofthe
down to stand invisibly between them' (p. 108). Other
actors, or he's swooping
the world as a story. Gibreel's
in the
characters
likewise experience
girlfriend
later part of the novel, Alleluia Cone, is described as acting like 'a character in a
she belonged'
story of a kind in which she could never have imagined
(p. 319).
Passages of this sort suggest that the novel is a network of many narratives and
in somewhat
different ways independent
of
each of which functions
symbols,
A general
consciousness.
the others because it has a different contextualizing
comes from Alleluia Cone's father:
gloss for such narrative multiplicity
'The modern city,' Otto Cone on his hobbyhorse had lectured his bored family at table,
'is the locus classicus of incompatible realities. Lives that have no business mingling
with one another sit side by side upon the omnibus. One universe, on a zebra crossing,
is caught for an instant, blinking like a rabbit, in the headlamps of a motor-vehicle in
which an entirely alien and contradictory continuum is to be found. And as long as
that's all, they pass in the night, jostling on Tube stations, raising their hats in some
hotel corridor, it's not so bad. But if they meet! It's uranium and plutonium, each makes
the other decompose, boom.' (p. 314)
of Satanic
The modern
narratives
city seems similar to the heterogeneous
Verses. Indeed,
the novel climaxes
with riots and fire in London,
which can
be seen as exactly the kind of explosion
it is the
that Otto Cone describes:
when the minority
is
moment
given shape temporarily
unhappiness
by the
If
has
of
Chamcha.
this
is
the
Rushdie
constructed
a
case,
then,
monstrosity
novel that circulates
the figure of the monster?through
symbols?especially
and many levels of functioning.
The result is a story that
many narratives
closely mirrors the image of the city described
by Otto Cone. The Satanic
32 Feroza Jussawalla, 'Rushdie's Dastan-e-Dilruba: The Satanic Versesas Rushdie's Love Letter
to Islam', Diacritics, 26.1 (1996), 50-73 (p. 63).

DANIEL

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Verses is a mixture of 'incompatible

realities'?narrative
lines created by the
carried out by a variety of characters
and 'narrators'
within
interpretations
the story.
This particular
uses evolution's
claim that
approach to monster symbolism
we must contextualize
the monstrous
the nature of narra?
body to reconsider
tive. Evolution
demands that monsters be placed within a narrative context that
evaluates them in terms of the current norm and future morphology.
Rushdie
he has placed his monster into the context of
has done something
equivalent:
in a way that keeps its function
narratives
and
many competing
open-ended
does not allow it to become a simple image of abnormality.
As I suggested
at
of the role of the literary monster is a
the outset, behind this transformation
of what it means to construct
a narrative. The monster has
larger rethinking
become the occasion upon which a story can be opened up to many narrative
In Galdpagos we noted that Vonnegut
levels and trajectories.
used evolutionary
issues to create at least two layers of actors, each with its claim to be the central
novel, likewise, we see Chamcha inserted into
agents of the story. In Rushdie's
stories
that
raise
fundamental
about the perspective
from which
many
questions
Rushdie has created the equiva?
this symbol is made meaningful.
Ultimately,
lent at the level of his whole narrative of what Carter accomplished
when she
the self-deconstructing
Both
placed Fevvers's
symbolism
alongside
clowning.
writers are seeking to balance the monster's
tenunifying and 'deconstructive'
dencies. Rushdie, however, has found in narrative's own heterogeneous
mixture
of many levels and many trajectories
the perfect vehicle through which these
two tendencies
can be integrated.

Performing

Monsters

Rushdie's
narrative
us to think about the fundamental
clearly encourages
models with which we approach narrative, and suggests that how we contextu?
alize bodies within a narrative is a point at which a radically new style of novel
Behind the need to contextualize
the body is an issue that we
can be developed.
have already noted in Nights at the Circus?agency.
Who is contextualizing
and
thus controlling
the symbolism
of the monstrous
body? Clearly in Rushdie's
as responsibility
for the symbolic
novel agency is transformed,
meaning of the
the novel. I suggested
at the outset that
monstrous
body is diffused throughout
fiction to think through the condithe monstrous
body helped contemporary
focus on
We have seen that these conditions
tions of storytelling.
specifically
an author 'performs'
the
the problem
of who is doing what in a story?how
creatures can act in rich ways irreducible
monstrous
body and how monstrous
monster stories,
to the symbolism
granted to them by authors. Contemporary
then, explore the agency of narrative.
narrative agency? We have already
suited to investigating
Why are monsters
seen a partial answer to this when we noted the author's need to contextualize
on the author's
act of making the
the evolutionary
body, placing emphasis
More generally, I would like to suggest that the monster
monster meaningful.
is an entity created precisely
by suppressing
agency. It is, in other words, an
whatever meaning we attribute to
object of pure being that usually embodies

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it seamlessly.
One novel that explores
the passive
is
'being' of monstrosity
Katherine
Dunn's
Geek Love, which I would like to discuss briefly by way
of conclusion.
Dunn's
novel tells the story of the
popular and controversial
Al
Binewski
circus.
Lil
Binewski
and
decide
to breed their own freak
family
show by systematically
Lil
to
In a
chemicals
while
she is pregnant.
exposing
Lil remarks, 'What greater
perverse turn on the idea of parental responsibility,
gift could you offer your children than an inherent ability to earn a living just by
Aside from several unsuccessful
being themselves?'33
'projects' that are either
stillborn
or that die very young, the couple manage to produce five children:
Arturo, known as Aqua Body, whose hands and feet are in the shape of flippers
and who lacks arms and legs; Siamese twins Electra (Ely) and Iphigenia (Iphy);
who is physically
(Ollie), an albino dwarf; and Fortunato
Olympia
(Chick),
normal but who has the power of telekinesis,
the ability to move objects with
his mind. The story itself is told by Ollie years later after the circus is destroyed.
The story allows Dunn to investigate
not only the notion of family?although
this is perhaps the novel's most dramatic and controversial
material?but
also
the peculiar public position
that such monstrosity
creates for the Binewski
like to focus on the novel's comments
about public
family. I would specifically
and the way that the circus's show is sustained
and presented.
monstrosity
The Binewski family is extremely
to display
public by virtue of its willingness
to make a living. Ollie realizes, however, later in her life that there
deformity
is something
inherently
'public' about monstrosity:
'People talk easily to me.
dwarf can't hide anything. My worst is all
They think a bald albino hunchback
out in the open. It makes it necessary
for people to tell you about themselves.
They begin out of simply courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession'
feel that such physical
(p. 156). In one sense, we might initially
deformity
is profoundly
renders the individual
personal?it
unique and would seem to
sever his or her experience
from that of others. Dunn, however,
insists that
monstrosity
places Ollie and her siblings in a permanently
public role. And
for Dunn, the purely public role that these monstrous
individuals
necessarily
makes
them
into
Of
all
the
members
of the circus, Arty is
occupy
pure beings.
the one to realize the power that monstrosity
brings: 'We have this advantage,
that the norms expect us to be wise. Even a rat's-ass dwarf jester got credit
for terrible canniness
in his foolery. Freaks are like owls, mythed
disguised
into blinking,
bloodless
The norms figure our contact with their
objectivity.
brand of life is shaky. They see us as cut off from temptation
and pettiness.
Even our hate is grand by their feeble lights. And the more deformed
we are,
the higher our supposed
sanctity'
(p. 114). Arty eventually
goes on to exploit
this objectivity
a religion
in which 'norms' gradually
sacrifice
by founding
their appendages
in order to move closer and closer to the monstrous
ideal
on the public
represented
by Arty himself. Most notable in Dunn's reflections
is the way that it is linked to the image of pure being.
power of monstrosity
Above I quoted the passage where Lil remarks that her children 'earn a living
This theme reappears with surprising
as
just by being themselves'.
importance
the novel goes on: monstrosity
and
appears to be a static object of observation,
Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (New York: Warner Books, 1990), p. 7.

DANIEL
never

PUNDAY

819

an actor. Arty's religion exploits a number of contemporary

insecurities,
as Arty remarks, 'I get glimpses
among which is the fear of being ordinary;
of the horror of normalcy.
Each of these innocents
on the street is engulfed
to be unique'
by a terror of their own ordinariness.
They would do anything
fear that he plays upon is the despair that
(p. 223). But the most important
comes with being reduced to a simple economic
cog, a worker. Arty makes this
with an interviewer
when he remarks on the luxury of
point in a discussion
'Consider
the bound feet of the Mandarin
maiden . . . and the
monstrosity:
Manchu scholar who jams his hands into lacquered boxes so his fingernails will
grow like curling death. Even the Mexican welder sports one long polished nail
on his smallest finger which declares to the world, "My life allows superfluity.
I have this whole finger to spare, unnecessary
to my labor and unscathed
by
it"' (p. 221; Dunn's ellipsis).
This passage suggests a fundamental
opposition
between activity and monstrosity?the
monstrous
body is an object for viewing
and cut off from action, especially
routine mass labour.
it becomes
As Geek Love builds towards its climax, however,
increasingly
clear that the image of pure being that Arty offers to his followers
cannot be
sustained;
indeed, it is not even a coherent
goal. The most obvious problem
with Arty's plans is practical. His religion calls for initiates to move up through
the ranks of holiness
at the rate
body parts?usually
by gradually
sacrificing
of single joints of appendages
at a time, with recovery periods between
each
to
and
Initiates
an
initial
enter
the
are
thereafter
religion,
surgery.
pay
'dowry'
of lower standing as they increasingly
lose the ability
taken care of by members
arise when the
to take care of themselves.
But, of course, a point will eventually
will outstrip the number of new members available
number of those 'completed'
to take care of them and this elaborate pyramid scheme will collapse.
Dunn,
however, suggests more philosophical
problems with the pure being represented
of Chick's telekinesis
to the
by Arty, especially when she reveals the importance
for
how
his
Chick
becomes
when
he
learns
to
use
Arty
religion.
important
power
to manipulate
parts of the brain that control pain. Later, Chick even learns how
One
to do surgery himself, eventually
making the circus doctor unnecessary.
might very well argue that Arty's religion depends on Chick's ability to facilitate
And yet, Chick's skill in
the surgeries that are the basis of spiritual progression.
'moving things' (p. 71) is the very opposite ofthe pure being that Arty promises
Chick is, we can say, the 'doing' that stands behind and supports
his followers.
He is likewise an 'invisible'
the pure 'being' that Arty sells to his followers.
lacks the visual appeal that makes Arty
monster?a
person whose monstrosity
Chick's 'doing' that
an embodiment
of pure being. In the end it is precisely
for the twins' child
responsible
destroys Arty and the circus. Arty is indirectly
to the point that the
who is 'eating the twins'?feeding
(Mumpo),
constantly
twins themselves
become 'frail and bony except the four breasts that ballooned
in time for Mumpo
to wake' (p. 309). Elly eventually
kills
three
hours
every
the child, and is in turn killed by Iphy. Confronted
by this personal loss, the
has played the twins
Chick turns his blame on Arty, who himself
sensitive
sought to destroy Elly. The ending of the
against each other and had ruthlessly
circus and of the family as a whole is a fiery storm:

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I [Ollie] heard nothing, but raised my hands against the rushing air, and the fire came,
toppling toward us in falling blocks like the wave in a child's dream, huge, though the
torches were booths and tents no taller than a man could touch with his hand. It came
billowing, scorching toward us, and the Chick, in his pain, could not hold himself but
reached. I felt him rush through me like a current of love to my cross points, and then
draw back. I, with my arms lifted, felt his eyes open into me, and felt their blue flicker
of recognition. Then he drew back. He pulled out of my separate self and was gone.
as light?
He turned away?and
the fire came. The flames spouted from him?pale
bursting outward from his belly. He did not scream or move but he spread, and my
world exploded with him. (p. 319)
it invisibly
The circus ends in an apotheosis
of the very power that sustained
out
most of the book. The final image here of flames sprouting
throughout
that we have
of the monstrosity
of Chick is in many ways the very opposite
that ultimately
seen?an
active agent rather than a passive object?suggesting
rests on action that supports it behind the scene.
the power of such monstrosity
in terms of storytelling,
Geek Love frames its reflections
on monstrosity
sug?
of monstrous
being applies to narrative
gesting that in the end this discussion
bodies in general.34 Indeed,
Peter Brooks has argued that the modern novel
the
body precisely through the desire for revelation and disclosure?a
explores
embodies.35
We can say that the monster
desire that the monster
completely
in the desire to
authors
and
that
readers
suggests
necessarily
participate
story
reveal all bodies as monsters?as
meaningful
symbols?even
though doing so
empties them of agency. Dunn claims that behind the monster show is an actor
who invisibly
sustains the monster's
natural and passive symbol?
apparently
ism. We have seen both Carter and Rushdie
reflect upon the problems
of the
monster's
but
Dunn
that
more
often
than
not
meaning,
specifically
suggests
the value of monstrosity
is to hide that agency, allowing writers or individuals
The alternative
to create a creature that seems to 'speak for itself.
freedom
to the ironies of creating and displaying
monsters
that Dunn reveals in Geek
Satanic
Verses
Love is the hybrid, multiple narrative that Rushdie constructs.
to drive
offers a way of using the performative
symbolism
energy of monstrous
and upon many different levels. All of
the narrative itself in many directions
the contemporary
writers of monster stories find a way to exploit the problems
of 'performing'
the monster, however, using the figure of the monstrous
body
of significance,
as a point where the narrative reflects on the problems
agency,
and narrative order. Against our current critical assumption
that literary mon?
sters are icons of polysemy
and cultural disunity, contemporary
fiction uses its
monsters
to challenge
and invigorate
the art of storytelling.
Purdue University
Calumet
Daniel
Punday
34 The novel itself is very much a 'monster story' told to Ollie's daughter. And Ollie starts her
story by mentioning Al's storytelling about the birth of herself and her sisters, often referring to
a time 'before I even dreamedyou, my dreamlets' (p. 4). This passage subtly treats the family as a
created thing, a dream-like or fictive construct of Al and Lil.
35 Brooks writes, 'An aesthetics of narrative embodiment insists that the body is only
apparently
lacking in meaning, that it can be semiotically retrieved. Along with the semioticization of the
body goes what we might call the somatization of the story: the implicit claim that the body is a
key sign in narrative and a central nexus of narrative meanings': Peter Brooks, Body Work: Objects
of Desire in Modern Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 25.