Cohen's Monster Culture: Reading Society Through Monsters
This paper analyzes three of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's seven theses from "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)," drawn from his edited collection Monster Theory: Reading Culture. The paper examines Thesis I (The Monster's Body is a Cultural Body), Thesis II (The Monster Always Escapes), and Thesis V (The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible). Through close reading and supplementary scholarship, the paper argues that Cohen's monsters — including vampires, werewolves, and Frankenstein — function as cultural constructs that embody societal fears, enforce social norms, and give symbolic form to marginalized identities. The analysis connects Cohen's framework to issues of race, sexuality, and systemic power.
- Introduction to Cohen and Monster Theory: Cohen's background and his monster-reading framework
- Thesis I: The Monster's Body as a Cultural Body: Monsters embody cultural fears and power structures
- Thesis II: The Monster Always Escapes: Monsters resurface to represent enduring social issues
- Thesis V: The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible: Monsters enforce cultural limits and punish deviation
- Conclusion: Society as the True Monster: True monsters are oppressive social forces themselves
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its analysis in direct quotations from Cohen and supporting scholars, demonstrating engagement with multiple academic sources rather than relying solely on the primary text.
- It connects abstract theoretical concepts — such as the monster as cultural body — to concrete social issues like racial inequality, queer identity, and the AIDS crisis, making the analysis accessible and relevant.
- The conclusion moves beyond summary to offer a personal critical position, arguing that society itself produces the monsters it fears, which gives the paper a clear argumentative arc.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates textual analysis combined with intertextual synthesis: it reads Cohen's primary theses alongside secondary sources on pedagogy, horror, and queer musicology, using each to illuminate a different dimension of the argument. This layering of sources shows how a single theoretical framework can be tested and enriched through interdisciplinary reading.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a biographical and bibliographical introduction to Cohen and his project, then moves through three thesis-by-thesis analytical sections. Each section introduces the thesis, provides a key quotation, and draws on at least one secondary source to develop the interpretation. The conclusion synthesizes the three theses into a unified critical claim about the relationship between monsters and oppressive social forces.
Introduction to Cohen and Monster Theory
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is the author of Monster Culture (Seven Theses). He is a Professor of English and the Director of MEMSI (the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute). Born in Cambridge, MA, he studied classics and creative writing at the University of Rochester before earning his PhD in English and beginning his teaching career in 1994.
The essay comes from Monster Theory: Reading Culture, a collection of essays for which Cohen served as both editor and contributor. The essays within analyze specific aspects of culture through the lens of the monsters those cultures produce. Cohen's essay itself proclaims a "new modus legendi" — an approach to reading cultures through the monsters they create. He challenges earlier modes of cultural studies by suggesting that knowledge is not local, and he proposes seven theses to help readers understand cultures through the monsters they generate.
The monsters referenced throughout the essay include the Alien, Vampires, Werewolves, Frankenstein, the Boogeyman, and Grendel. This paper focuses on three of Cohen's seven theses: Thesis I (The Monster's Body is a Cultural Body), Thesis II (The Monster Always Escapes), and Thesis V (The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible). These theses explore the significance of monsters in society beyond the merely literal or imaginary — how monsters never truly die, and how they are deployed culturally in literature and media. All of these points validly represent the way cultures view and engage with the concept of the monster.
Thesis I: The Monster's Body as a Cultural Body
Thesis I — The Monster's Body is a Cultural Body — is introduced with a striking opening claim that sets the tone for everything that follows: "The Monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment — of a time, a feeling, and a place. The monster's body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy (ataractic or incendiary), giving them life and an uncanny independence" (Picart and Browning 15). The body of the culture is defined by domination, aggressive competition, gender inequality, and hierarchies of power. Much like the image of the monster — aggressive, physically imbalanced, and powerful — the image of a culture reflects similar characteristics. The monster and the culture, in this reading, essentially represent the same thing.
In order to teach others about monstrosity, one must first detach from the structures and misconceptions that popularize and reproduce those structures. To dislodge ingrained images, it helps to analyze them through a different lens. Cohen does this early in the thesis. As explained in a work on pedagogy and horror, "the fear response is an initial fear of awareness or knowledge of counter-hegemony, which is followed by a temporary refusal of that knowledge. This process, taking up of a potentially terrifying idea as long as necessary…" (Ahmad and Moreland 53).
The monster helps extinguish that common fear response. By employing the terrifying image of the monster, Cohen offers a way to confront the fear of real cultural phenomena — such as race — and uses the monster to help readers understand where that fear originates. Eventually, by the end of the thesis, the monstrous image that served as the foundational frame dissolves from the mind. This is an effective method for introducing the fear embedded in cultural traditions while also analyzing why societies construct portraits of monsters in the first place.
Furthermore, introducing an image like that of the "crossroads" helps bring the monster into focus as a cultural construct, acting as a transition across what becomes a blurred line between fiction and reality. A compelling example is the vampire. The vampire represents the night, an aversion to sunlight, and an animalistic hunger for blood. Many cultures engage in transgressive activities under the cover of darkness; some even practice sacrifice — animal or human — in service of tradition or violence. This aspect of the monster, which "exists only to be read," serves as a way to highlight the atrocities of human behavior while remaining safely within the realm of the imagined.
Conclusion: Society as the True Monster
Monsters, in the end, illustrate the dire consequences awaiting those who fail to adhere to cultural standards. If one attempts to stray from prescribed social spheres, the logic goes, one becomes something far more heinous. Although this is far from the truth, it reflects how certain societies believe deviation will be punished. Cultures, in essence, use monsters to demonstrate what happens when an individual deviates from the norm.
Cohen presents many valid points across his theses. He offers important insight into the reasons why societies and cultures create monsters. Monsters serve to highlight social movements, to teach people what behaviors are unacceptable, and to reinforce what it means to remain accepted within a community. Yet reading Cohen's work ultimately reveals where the true monsters reside — within society itself. As his second thesis suggests, they always return: as racism, as sexism, as some other oppressive and destructive force. If the future of humanity remains in the grip of these monsters, the outlook is grim indeed. Monsters should eventually be allowed to die, and society must learn to break free from what it deems monstrous in order to exist in balance and harmony.
Works Cited
Ahmad, Aalya, and Sean Moreland. Fear and Learning. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013. Print.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Print.
Jarman-Ivens, Freya. Queer Voices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Picart, Caroline Joan, and John Edgar Browning. Speaking of Monsters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.
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