Download Style Sheet 1
(pdf)

Download Style Sheet 2
(pdf)

Session 7: Nineteenth Century Monstrosity
Chair: Josephine Mariea

Writing and Re-writing the Story: Self-Preservation and Monstrosity in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Anne-Lise Perotto
University of Savoie, France

With The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg created a fascinating novel made up of embedded narratives, writing and re-writing the story of Robert Wringhim, the justified sinner of the title. The fictional editor reappraises the events told by Wringhim in the light of local history, warning the reader that he should not believe the author of the memoirs, a monster who killed his own brother. The oxymoron “justified sinner” is thus understood by the reader as designating an aberration, instead of a man who has been justified, ie a sinner who has been granted grace by God. In addition, the editor decides to publish Wringhim’s book after witnessing the mysterious preservation of his body after death. Therefore, Wringhim is a monster in the etymological sense, an aberration to be exhibited.
The printed book that is found with him might be, it is argued by one of the characters, at the origin of the preservation of the body. What is more, they are “memoirs (…) written by himself”. They are meant to guarantee immortality and to leave a trace that Wringhim can control. He wants to make sure his self-representation will not be altered, hence the curse “on him that should dare to alter or amend”.
The link between self and immortality is reminiscent of Otto Rank’s analysis of the figure of the double, in which he explains that the double is meant to preserve the self from death, but soon becomes a threat to the self. It is no surprise then that an evil double, Gil-Martin, should appear in Wringhim’s narrative. He is the monstrous other, a projection of Wringhim’s dark side, whose persecution he so desperately tries to flee that he commits suicide. Self-destruction is paradoxically a means of preserving himself. Thus, in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, self-preservation is at the origin of monstrosity.

Download Conference Paper -

Architecture of Pre-Columbian Middle American Civilizations and its Challenge to the ‘Metaphorical Monsters’ of 19th Century European ‘Anthropological Consciousness’
Alexandro Silva
The Research School of Humanities, The Australian National University, Australia

This paper proffers a critical historiological study of a sector of western ‘anthropological consciousness’ characteristic of the mid to late 19th century Europe by arguing that certain articulations of the ideological legitimization of the late-modern ‘West’ were inadvertently problematized by significant archaeological discoveries of the ‘mysterious’, but ‘vanished’ civilizations of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. An effort is made to elucidate some of the historically eclipsed semiotic effects which these para-archaeological encounters with the ‘remnants and ruins’ of the indigenous cultures of pre-Columbian Middle America had for the European ethnological and scientific imagination. Specifically, it is argued that the ‘archaeological’ re-discovery of highly-developed architecture in the form of impressive monuments, temples, pyramids, ceremonial centers, and other large-scale structures during this time-period of exploration by western European scholars significantly disrupted dominant conceptions of the 19th century’s transmuted legacy of ‘pre-civilizational monstrosity’ associated with the ascribed ontological status of ‘New World primitives’ as characterized in the historical discourses of colonial, ethnological, and quasi-anthropological discourse. Hermeneutic emphasis is given to an analysis of the ‘backlash’ ideological effects which the scale, aesthetics, and structural complexity of monumental architecture, as the most visually salient physical and symbolic artifact, had on the European anthropological imagination, and by implication, on certain narratives of apexic social evolutionary status attributed to the historical, civilizational supremacy of western societies by European intelligentsia. It is argued that more than any other ‘semiotic artifact’, the very existence of architecturally and aesthetically complex ‘monuments’ [of these ‘lost civilizations’] posed a serious intellectual challenge to the dominant ‘metonymic monstrosities’ historically found in variable European discourses on Amerindian ‘ontological primitivity’ (e.g. as ‘savages’ and ‘cannibals’, inter alia), including, for instance, subsequent ‘scientisitc’ imputations of physico-racial, material-cultural, intellectual, and social primitivity. Finally, it is concluded (a la Tvetan Todorov) that the question of “the Architecture of the extinct Other” of Mesoamerica had the paradoxical effect of contributing, in its own way, toward the increasing problematization of European narratives, rhetorics, and idioms of civilizational supremacy having their historical origins in the Enlightenment as well as their continuity in latter 19th century’s ethnological discourses on comparative cultural evolutionism.

J. Merrick (The Elephant Man) and the Concept of Monstrosity in 19th Century Medical Thought
Katherine Angell
Queen Mary College, University of London, United Kingdom

In this paper I provide evidence of an inconsistency and an absence of a definite concept of monstrosity within the nineteenth century. Using the autobiographies of monsters and medical reports I will concentrate on three main areas: the use of classification systems in the diagnosis of monstrosity, experimental embryology and the evidence given for the causes of monstrosity, and the treatment offered in public hospitals to cure monstrosities. I argue that there was no clear definition of monstrosity in medicine at this time. Instead a space was created where monsters had multiple causes, aetiologies, different diagnoses and were analysed as individuals. Teratology encouraged wide ranging debate and experimental science, which led to a transformation of the understanding of monstrosity in the nineteenth century. This new understanding spread across medicine and was reflected in the social consciousness and literary representation of the time. In particular, the ‘new’ discourse of monstrosity was characterised by the attempted removal of mythical explanations and an uneasy acceptance of experimental science.
The life of Joseph Merrick, famous as “The Elephant Man”, demonstrates the inconsistency of teratological classification, diagnosis, evidence and treatment. Not only did Joseph experience the absence of a universal medical opinion, he also questioned the opinions of those offered to him. Joseph was highly vocal in his beliefs in mythology and the cause of his own condition, which clashed with all major forms of teratological theory. His life as a travelling ‘freak’ also brought questions about the legitimacy of his case within medicine, and the legitimacy of those who treated him. Joseph’s disorder not only interacted with medical debates but with philosophical and anthropological debates. His case is important as it highlights discrepancies in the debates upon religion, hybridism, heredity theory and evolution.

Download Conference Paper -

© Wickedness.Net 2007