Polemology

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Kristine Ong, "Introduction" (Christopher Slatsky, "The Immeasurable Co**se of Nature")
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"The dark lore of the Capiznon in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines talks of the amalanhig, a risen member of the undead that is said to follow a person around, imitating what that person does and says. One variation of the amalanhig urban legend has it performing its duplication of a person’s motions and utterances in reverse—timewise, to further emphasize its perversion. I don’t exactly understand how this version of the myth works, but I take it to mean literally like this: if the person that the amalanhig is mimicking crosses the street at noon, then that person’s amalanhig-tormentor would take the exact same path to cross that exact same street at midnight.
For those privileged with a decent purchase of the world’s culture-spanning pantheon of supernatural horrors, the amalanhig’s touted physical manifestation could seem downright boring, even resembling a basic B-movie monster. It is said to exude the sickly-sweet stench of rotting flesh. It also cannot bend its legs, though this does not prevent it from moving so fast that outrunning it is impossible. When doused with water, the amalanhig is said to turn into a heap of maggots, its vulnerable form. Many other mythical creatures present a far more frightening construction than the amalanhig.
But what truly sets it apart for me is this: the cruel, menacing machinery of torment that anchors the amalanhig myth represents one of the most unsettling iterations of dread because there is no defining purpose of its replication of human acts, which seems absolutely pointless, needless. There is, of course, an element of calculation behind its actions. Malign intelligence exists behind its instincts. Chaos might appear to be outfitted with a cold, perverted heart, but it is still structured from order. In the case of the amalanhig, its intent is perpetually tucked away from sight.
What does the amalanhig want from the person whose actions it is replicating when it is not even attempting to take over that person’s body or that person’s life? Is it hungry, but not in the same way that the Chinese iiangshi is hungry? Is its sadistic torture consistent with its aberrant psychology? Why does it do what it does? Nobody knows. It can be killed with water, but what is it trying to accomplish when it copies a person’s actions?
Avenging nature spirits, for example, tend to do what they do to relieve the source of their perceived injustice, which makes their motivation understandable, less frightening—and, at least, one is still presented with the choice of whether or not to mess with them. Urban legends based on the depiction of the amalanhig as a vengeful creature are probably urged on by this desperate finding of a way to see, this trying to come to terms with the nagging unanswerable whys, which can’t be extinguished by squashing the life out of the heap of maggots that an amalanhig ultimately becomes in the presence of water."

Raise your hand if you’re into “ambient body horror.”

The Descent of Autofiction … and the Rise of the Literary Thrill-Seeking Industrial Complex Autofiction and new narrative are booming, thanks to a host of innovative writers and presses....

It is remarkable, that, despite the various waves of linguistic patriotism and purist filtering of foreign words, the Latin words “norm” and “normal” are present in all three major European language groups: Germanic, Roman, and Slavic. “Normal” is used even in Hungarian and Finnish, which belong to Finno-Ugric, a rare, non-European language family. It seems that among the European languages, only modern Greek uses another word for normal (kannoniko). According to dictionaries, these words penetrated European languages at around the same time – roughly speaking, between 1810 (the first rare usages) and 1850 (common usage).

The oxymoron of normality Now that "normalization" has come to seem a fact in post-communist eastern Europe, it might be asked why the word "normal" was so close to people's hearts. How does its meaning in the context of transition compare to western usages of the word? A Begriffsgeshichte of the concept of "normality" revea...

CfP..non-western ecology...

Call for papers for the second issue | Journal of Ecohumanism Call for papers for the second issue 2022-01-04 SPECIAL ISSUE Decolonial Ecosophy: A Deliberative Encounter with Indian and non-western Eco-TheologiesThe dense interplay between the multiple strands of eco-criticality in the current times that effectively exposes the ambivalences of state machinery....

Enter the castle...

BE WARNED!!! 10.24.21 Dr. Dragan Kujundžić's talk The Stakes Are High: Dracula-Vlad-the-Impaler, … 2021 All Rights Reserved Matthew W. Jarvis & Juan José Castaño-Márquez.

We are thrilled to announce the first of the public lectures series part of this year's Summer School for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics - Jack Halberstam "Unworlding". The lecture will be streamed online on our page on 18 August (Wednesday), 18:00h. CET.

Jack Halberstam is Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University. Halberstam is the author of seven books including: Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Duke UP, 1995), Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998), In A Q***r Time and Place (NYU Press, 2005), The Q***r Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011), (Beacon Press, 2012) and, a short book titled Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance (University of California Press). Halberstam’s latest book, out in 2020, from Duke UP is titled Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire. Places Journal awarded Halberstam its Arcus/Places Prize in 2018 for innovative public scholarship on the relationship between gender, sexuality and the built environment. Halberstam is now finishing a second volume on wildness titled: The Wild Beyond: Music, Architecture and Anarchy.

Abstract: In my recent book, Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire, I propose that wildness is a deeply ambivalent form of power, one that cannot be harnessed neatly by human intention but that spins away from human will towards other forms of engagement. In my book, I offer ambiguous figures who stand in for the potential for wildness to either unmake the world or become a site of ferocious and often erotic appropriation – figure of Max from Where the Wild Things Are who refuses the space of the family home where he is ruled, only to enter the space of the wild things, where he becomes a ruler. My book asks whether we can think with wildness on behalf of different ways of engaging with non-human life and whether we can move away from world making towards unworlding.

Shelley Jackson

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Animalisation of disabled people, as a technique of inferiorising them, making them as 'lesser than human', as 'not-human'. At least not the 'human' that is valued the most in colonial patriarchal society: the white abled bodied man.

A classic example of animalisation of disabled people is 'the Elephant Man' (movie from 1980) based on the life of Joseph Merrick, who most likely had proteus syndrome (causing an overgrowth of skin, bones, muscles, fatty tissues, and blood and lymphatic vessels).

[ID incl]

Kind reminder to watch first part of video-book "The Politics of the Monstrous"...

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