Monster: the Economy of Parts and the Limits of Evolution

Abstract

The article examines the ontological economy of the concept of «monster» as a radicalization of «being-to-death», i.e. as a literal approach to death, previously impossible. This concept is constructed in opposition to two other interpretations — the monster as “undead” in contemporary psychoanalysis, and its neutral interpretation as multiplication of modes of existence or hybridization. The first version is too hasty because it puts the monster in a kind of ontological limbo, while the second sees it as no different from a host of other hybridized or «weird» entities. The notion of the monster as a mereological economy directed towards death draws on the interpretation of cinematic monsters proposed by the film critic Tarnowski and the philosopher Clément Rosset. The monster is one who engages in an impossible bargain with death, based on the question «what can be taken away or added to if you want to stay alive?». The crucial factor in the construction of the monster is the accidentality of death, that is, the impossibility of meaningful interpretation of death as a specific medium. As a result, the monster undermines not only the classical being-to-death (death as an impossible horizon), but also the evolutionary logic of selection in which survival requires mediation by an ecological interface. The mereology of the monster blurs the distinction between phenotypically relevant traits and irrelevant, or freeriding, leaving it with a pure economy of accidental annihilation in which any part can claim its own dominance.