Introduction:

The Monstrous Hospitality of Canonical Text Selections: The Need for a Hospitable Literacy Framework

“…Narratives of creatures with perceived bodily oddities are “important elements in understanding the psychologies and the body-images of ‘normal’ subjects, attesting to what is and is not tolerable or incorporable into normality” (Grosz, 2020, p. 419). Speculative fiction (e.g., sci-fi, fantasy, and horror) includes aliens, futuristic beings, and monsters who mirror the existences and experiences of real-world Others marred by pernicious stereotypes (Weinstock, 2020). Any tale that includes “fantastic beasts, witches, zombies, vampires, dragons, manticores, shades, and the rest of the monstrous menagerie [are] analogous to those who are positioned as different in the real world” (Thomas, 2019, p. 20).…”

“…Difference in minoritized identity is exaggerated into monstrous aberration. In this way, the monster is a “[text] in need of interpretation” (Weinstock, 2020, p. 46). It is a metaphor for those considered monstrous in dominant society.…”

Zombies and India: The neoMONSTERS Epidemiology

“…Monster theory can be a starting point. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock divides the “theorization of monstrosity” into three “tracks”: teratology, mythology, and psychology (Monster Theory Reader 4); these three sutras coalesce within the neoMONSTERS epidemiology, which this article advocates for. One, Bal Phondke attributes the “Indianness” of Indian SF to “the cultural and social ambience which gives it soul” (It Happened Tomorrow xi); this soul often wanders around looking for suitable (textual) bodies to possess.…”

Infrahuman madness: Mental health nursing and the discursive production of alterity

“…(CNO, 2019, p. 16) In this excerpt and extending beyond the sort of theatricalization of the mad achieved by the RNAO's Guideline document discussed above, what this case study risks is the monstersizing of the mad subjectivity, effectively framing those with mental health challenges as deviant, criminal, and to-be-feared child abusers, occupying a label "reserved for a person whose actions have placed him [sic] outside the range of humanity" (Asma, 2009, p. 205). Drawing on the psychiatric diagnosis known as "pedophilic disorders" (APA, 2013), this sort of conceptualization participates in the simultaneous construction of the human as a monster (Asma, 2009;Weinstock, 2020) and the mad human as violent (Stuart, 2003). To be clear, we are certainly not advocating for any form of child abuse here.…”