Monstrosity

The Human Monster in Visual Culture

Alexa Wright

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857733351
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

From the 'Monster of Ravenna' to the 'Elephant Man', Myra Hindley and Ted Bundy, the visualisation of 'real', human monsters has always played a part in how society sees itself. But what is the function of a monster? Why do we need to embody and represent what is monstrous? This book investigates the appearance of the human monster in Western culture, both historically and in our contemporary society. It argues that images of real (rather than fictional) human monsters help us both to identify and to interrogate what constitutes normality; we construct what is acceptable in humanity by depicting what is not quite acceptable. By exploring theories and examples of abnormality, freakishness, madness, otherness and identification, Alexa Wright demonstrates how monstrosity and the monster are social and cultural constructs. However, it soon becomes clear that the social function of the monster – however altered a form it takes – remains constant; it is societal self-defence allowing us to keep perceived monstrosity at a distance. Through engaging with the work of Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Canguilhem (to name but a few) Wright scrutinises and critiques the history of a mode of thinking. She reassesses and explodes conventional concepts of identity, obscuring the boundaries between what is 'normal' and what is not.

Alexa Wright is Reader in Visual Culture at the University of Westminster. She is also a practising visual artist who works with video, sound and interactive digital media.

‘Alexa Wright offers an intriguing meditation on the survival of some classical rhetorics of monstrousness in medieval and especially modern visual cultures. Well illustrated and lively, this book will appeal to anyone intrigued by the history of monsters.’

Jeffrey J. Cohen, Professor of English, George Washington University

‘Alexa Wright’s thought-provoking new book takes the study of human monstrosity from its earliest manifestation in Pliny’s Monstrous Races right up to an analysis of contemporary mass murderers. Using a plethora of illustrations, Wright investigates Foucault’s contention that the human monster has vanished from view to be replaced by monstrous character and behaviour to show how iconography still remains crucial to our ability to place and contain those who deeply disturb us. The great strength of Monstrosity lies in the author’s deft handling of complex and scholarly images and analysis alongside the expression of her own fascination and puzzlement. The questions “What is truly human?” and even “Who am I?” are never far from the surface.’

Margrit Shildrick, Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production, Linköping University, and author of Embodying the Monster

‘With Monstrosity, Alexa Wright offers a provocative and fresh understanding of the monster, the cultural figure that has haunted the human imagination from antiquity to the present. Human monsters, Wright demonstrates, are the unusual and unexpected beings which are on the very edges of the human and onto which we have projected and continue to project our own meanings, fears and fantasies. Alexa Wright’s unique contribution to the recent conversation about human monsters comes from her perspective as a photographer. Approaching the human monster from the visual perspective as she does allows Wright to consider the complicated human dilemma about knowing what we see and seeing what we know.’

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Professor of Women’s Studies, Emory University

Monstrosity

The Human Monster in Visual Culture

Alexa Wright

Published in 2013 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd

6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU

175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

www.ibtauris.com

Distributed in the United States and Canada

Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

Copyright © 2013 Alexa Wright

The right of Alexa Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 78076 335 4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978 1 78076 336 1 (pbk)

eISBN: 978 0 85773 335 1

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Monstrous Strangers at the Edge of the World: The Monstrous Races

2 Blurring the Boundaries of Nature and Culture: Wild People and Feral Children

3 Bodies and the Order of Society: The Greek Ideal, the Monster of Ravenna and Physiognomy

4 Monsters in Proximity: Freaks and the Spectacle of Abnormality

5 A Monstrous Subject: Representations of Joseph Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man’

6 Monstrous Images of Evil: Picturing Jack the Ripper and Myra Hindley

7 Modern Monsters and the Image of Normality: Ted Bundy and Anders Breivik

Afterword

Notes

Bibliography and Further Reading

Illustrations

1.1 The Monstrous Races, Arnstein Bible, c.1172 (British Library, Harley 2799, f. 243)

1.2 Panotii, lintel of Basilique Ste-Madeleine, Vézelay, France, c.1125–30

1.3 Richard of Haldingham, Mappa Mundi, c.1300 (Hereford Cathedral)

1.4 Detail from a nineteenth-century facsimile of the Hereford Mappa Mundi, showing Monstrous Races at the edge of the world

2.1 Alexander and the Wild Man, painted manuscript illumination, c.1420 (© The British Library Board)

2.2 Alexander and the Wild Man, painted manuscript illumination, c.1410–12 (© Bibliothèque nationale de France)

2.3 Jean Bourdichon, ‘The Wild Condition’, c.1500 (© L’École nationale supérieure des beaux arts, Paris)

2.4 ‘What Is It?’, poster originally produced in London, c.1846 (© The British Library Board)

2.5 Oxana Malaya (Courtesy of Animal Planet)

3.1 Leonardo da Vinci, ‘Vitruvian Man’, c.1487 (Photo: Luc Viatour)

3.2 Gregor Reisch, ‘De Astrologia – Astrological Man’, 1503 (Wellcome Library, London)

3.3 Roman copy of Myron’s ‘Discobolus’ (‘Discus Thrower’) (© Trustees of the British Museum)

3.4 The Monster of Ravenna from a German broadside of 1506 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich, Einbl. VIII, 18)

3.5 Licetus, ‘The Monster of Ravenna’, 1634 (The Liverpool Medical Institution)

3.6 Leonardo da Vinci, ‘Five Grotesque Heads’, c.1480–1510 (Supplied by Royal Collection Trust. © HM Queen Elizabeth II 2012)

3.7 Charles Le Brun, ‘The Head of an Ox and the Head of an Ox-like Man’, c.1820 (Wellcome Library, London)

3.8 Johann Kaspar Lavater, ‘Eight Ways of Looking at Socrates’, 1789

3.9 Sir Francis Galton, composite portraits, 1883 (UCL Library Services, Special Collections)

3.10 Cesare Lombroso, ‘Six Criminal Types’, 1888 (Wellcome Library, London)

3.11 Hugh Welch Diamond, ‘Religious Melancholy’, c.1850–8 (Royal Society of Medicine, London)

3.12 Lithograph after Figure 3.11, 1858 (Royal Society of Medicine, London)

4.1 ‘JoJo, the Russian Dog-faced Boy’, c.1884 (Photo: Charles Eisenmann. Courtesy of Michael Mitchell)

4.2 Henry Johnson as ‘Zip’ with Ashbury Benjamin, the ‘Leopard Boy’, c.1885 (Photo: Charles Eisenmann. Courtesy of Michael Mitchell)

4.3 Freak show at the Rutland Fair, Vermont, 1941 (Photo: Jack Délano. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection)

4.4 Bearded lady, Madame Devere, c.1878 (Photo: Charles Eisenmann. Courtesy of Michael Mitchell)

4.5 Bearded lady, Madame Devere, with her husband, c.1878 (Photo: Charles Eisenmann. Courtesy of Michael Mitchell)

4.6 Charles Tripp, calling card, 1885 (Photo: Charles Eisenmann. Courtesy of Michael Mitchell)

5.1 Letter written by Joseph Merrick to Leila Maturin, 7 October 1889 (The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, ref. DE3644)

5.2 Medical photographs of Joseph Merrick, 1886 (Royal London Hospital Archives)

5.3 Carte de visite portrait of Joseph Merrick in his ‘Sunday-best’ suit, c.1887 (Royal London Hospital Archives)

5.4 Merrick’s cap and veil (Royal London Hospital Archives)

6.1 Sketches of Jack the Ripper, 20 October 1888 (© Museum of London)

6.2 Photo-fit of Jack the Ripper, compiled for police at Scotland Yard in 2006

6.3 Widely distributed version of the police mug shot of Myra Hindley, 1965 (Original © Cheshire Police)

6.4 V...

Table of contents

• Author Bio
• Title Page