Download Style Sheet 1
(pdf)

Download Style Sheet 2
(pdf)

Download Specimen Chapter
(Word)

Session 14: Designing Monsters, Building Walls
Chair: John Ejizu

Monster Design: Tools, Strategies, and Structures
Jamel Shakir

Using Neo-Aristotelian Language Theory and Wittgensteinian Language Game Theory to design competitively artistic and performative monsters through strategic language-sets. Language is being defined as markings, signals, signs, symbols, and gestures used to communicate meaning(s). The tool, strategy, and structure (TSS) method of analysis is applied to a sample monster: the demonized human-sacrificing witchdoctor (who has only recently become content with the murder of innocent chickens). The chicken is also examined as a metaphor for human sacrifice.

Marquis de Sade; Building Walls
Paul Yoder
Saint Louis University, USA

It was in the Bastille in 1789 that Donatien-Alphonse-François, better known as the Marquis de Sade, finished his novel The 120 Days of Sodom, and it is not surprising that the setting of the work is an impregnable fortress, the castle Silling, a French reflection of the castle so popular in the English gothic romances at this time.  For Sade, the man-made technology of the castle, abbey, and subterranean catacomb labor to hide horror from the outside world, creating spaces where natural law ceases to exist.  If, as I will argue, one can only define the real through a conception of that which is imaginary, the castle wall allows for a redefining of these very principals, and thus, creates a world of shifting paradigms and a fluidity of textual meaning.  The castle wall quickly becomes a prison wall, where rules and meanings become dislodged from that of society’s unconfined counterpart.  Private spaces become redefined through their separation with the public, and the monstrosity shaped by external perception also becomes redefined as an internal structure with an ever-changing series of governing laws.  It is in just this context that we perceive an endless external repetition, the walls of the castle never change; however, the internal structures, divided from the monotonous external recycling are allowed to remain fluid.  The medieval castle has long been seen as that which separates; the greatest man-made obstacle to keep the forces of nature at bay.  Thus, it is easy to understand the relevance of castle ruins in gothic literature as a symbol of the ultimate power of nature and man’s inability to isolate and control such natural powers.  In short, the symbol of the castle embodies man’s realization that he is powerless against the forces of nature. 
I will argue that the castle embodies the monstrous in Sade, and more specifically the castle wall ultimately symbolizes the divide between the interiority of the psychoanalytic Self and the exteriority of law and moral values.  Sade’s Les 120 Journées de Sodome, as disturbing as it is, most clearly illustrates the divide between inner and outer, primarily because it is such a shocking text.  Sade was influenced by the English Romantic Gothic, having read Lewis and Radcliffe, and there is a strong reflection of the Gothic tradition in his works.  However, my main emphasis will be on the relationship between the spatial divide illustrated in Sade’s use of the castle, and the divided space between cultural value systems and personal desire.

Download Conference Paper -

© Wickedness.Net 2006