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Howling at the moon, again?
Mar. 14th, 2007 10:40 pmAs the cliche goes, these thoughts came to me in the shower.
I have of late been pondering werewolves. More specifically, I've been pondering werewolves within the framework of critical and cultural studies, considering the kinds of narratives werewolf stories present, and what discourses are present within them.
Looking back, I'm not entirely happy with my werewolf thesis. There were possibilities for more in-depth theory (eg Deleuze and Guattari's "becoming-animal", Derrida and the animal that therefore I am/follow), and also areas that would probably have benefited from a close reading of limited texts (perhaps following Terry Pratchett's contrast/parallel between werewolves and Sam Vimes's beast/inner violent potential, for instance). But honours is done with, finished; all I am left with is a niggling desire to keep writing, to dig deeper on my own time, to excavate the skeleton buried in my muddy thoughts.
So I buy Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus; I sit up and pay attention when werewolves are the Weird Thing of the Week on The Dresden Files (and sigh and mutter when they follow contemporary werewolf mythos of bite=infection instead of Jim Butcher's original plethora of 'historical' werewolf types in Fool Moon); I plan to look at Derrida more closely, and read up on the main issues in queer theory. And I ponder, but do not write.
Insofar as shower-think has taken me (revisiting thesis territory, but maybe a new patch of ground):
Werewolves are about the subordination of the intellect (and thus implicitly other elements of that binary - Man, order, civilisation, etc) to the Other - to the body, to desire, to Nature (red in tooth and claw), to chaos/disorder, to violence, to the female (or another Other, eg homosexuality or gender blurring). What discourses surround this liminality will reflect on social concerns (eg fear of infection/contamination, or the tension between "progress"/humanity and "the natural way"/environmentalism). A generally positive attitude to becoming a werewolf is usually dependent on (though neither assumed nor limited to) genres/narrative which favour a feminist ecology; romanticism of lycanthropy is often associated with romanticism of Nature and wolves themselves; negative attitudes to lycanthropy are generally associated with humanist (binary) narratives or genres which feature the abject(mainly horror). They are emblematic of both the binary and the liminal, which allows several discourses concerning dualism and liminality to be mapped out on them.
Of course, these thoughts are subject to change upon further reading ;). Comments, questions, or discussion welcome.
~
I have of late been pondering werewolves. More specifically, I've been pondering werewolves within the framework of critical and cultural studies, considering the kinds of narratives werewolf stories present, and what discourses are present within them.
Looking back, I'm not entirely happy with my werewolf thesis. There were possibilities for more in-depth theory (eg Deleuze and Guattari's "becoming-animal", Derrida and the animal that therefore I am/follow), and also areas that would probably have benefited from a close reading of limited texts (perhaps following Terry Pratchett's contrast/parallel between werewolves and Sam Vimes's beast/inner violent potential, for instance). But honours is done with, finished; all I am left with is a niggling desire to keep writing, to dig deeper on my own time, to excavate the skeleton buried in my muddy thoughts.
So I buy Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus; I sit up and pay attention when werewolves are the Weird Thing of the Week on The Dresden Files (and sigh and mutter when they follow contemporary werewolf mythos of bite=infection instead of Jim Butcher's original plethora of 'historical' werewolf types in Fool Moon); I plan to look at Derrida more closely, and read up on the main issues in queer theory. And I ponder, but do not write.
Insofar as shower-think has taken me (revisiting thesis territory, but maybe a new patch of ground):
Werewolves are about the subordination of the intellect (and thus implicitly other elements of that binary - Man, order, civilisation, etc) to the Other - to the body, to desire, to Nature (red in tooth and claw), to chaos/disorder, to violence, to the female (or another Other, eg homosexuality or gender blurring). What discourses surround this liminality will reflect on social concerns (eg fear of infection/contamination, or the tension between "progress"/humanity and "the natural way"/environmentalism). A generally positive attitude to becoming a werewolf is usually dependent on (though neither assumed nor limited to) genres/narrative which favour a feminist ecology; romanticism of lycanthropy is often associated with romanticism of Nature and wolves themselves; negative attitudes to lycanthropy are generally associated with humanist (binary) narratives or genres which feature the abject(mainly horror). They are emblematic of both the binary and the liminal, which allows several discourses concerning dualism and liminality to be mapped out on them.
Of course, these thoughts are subject to change upon further reading ;). Comments, questions, or discussion welcome.
~
