Hur blev jag ett monster? : Om monsterskapande i Howard Phillips Lovecrafts The Outsider och The Thing on the Doorstep

Sammanfattning:

In this essay, I employ Judith Butlers theories of gender performativity to examine the construction of the monstrosity in Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s two works The Outsider and The Thing on the Doorstep. Focusing on the character’s monstrous attributes, how they are seen by themselves, by others and not least by the reader, I examine how their monstrosity is created and strengthened by dehumanizing processes. I argue that Lovecraft through his narrative technique complicates the relation between monstrosity and humanity in his characters, the result of which is a reader left to determine how monstrous, or human, the creature really is. I claim that the beings, themselves remaining uncertain about their own human and monstrous sides throughout Lovecraft’s stories, are not in fact monsters for the reader until the very moment that they themselves acquiescein their own exclusion.