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.

La recherche explore, dès le départ, une pratique qui croise le dessin avec des pratiques de danse contemporaine, investissant la tension dynamique avec le sol, l’espace gravitaire. Ces pratiques sont questionnées et réinvesties par l’expérience et l’apprentissage en Inde du sud, de rituels de dessins de poudre tracés au sol : les kolam, apparaissant sur les seuils des maisons tamoules à l’aube et les kalam, réalisés lors de cérémonies rituelles au Kérala. Des dessins éphémères où alternent tracés et effacements, dans un geste sacré qui fait puis défait. Le dialogue entre pratiques rituelles et pratiques artistiques est envisagé partant de cette expérience et de cette immersion ouvrant une proximité avec l’approche anthropologique. Au-delà du religieux, qu’apporte cette mise bord à bord avec les rites, avec ces rites indiens en particulier ? Dans ces entre-deux, la pratique se déploie et engage la collaboration fertile avec différents danseurs, devenus passeurs, dans l’espace ouvert de la performance qui rend visible ce processus de mue du dessin. La poudre constitue un matériau essentiel à ces traversées fragiles. Le dessin est analysé dans ses transports successifs du sol aux corps des danseurs, à l’espace de l’installation, jouant dans l’instant des seuils du visible, disparaissant dans le geste de l’effacement, devenu le geste essentiel dans cet accès au rite. Un dessin qui propulse l’action des corps. Qu’est-ce qui peut se transporter ou non de ces pratiques rituelles et ébranler ainsi la pratique du dessin, devenant à la fois trajectoire et processus ? En quoi finalement ces rites nous regardent-ils, nous plasticiens, malgré leur profonde opacité ? / This research explores a practice which mingles drawing with practices of contemporary dance, engaging a relationship of dynamic tension to the ground, to gravitational space. These practices are reinvested by the experience and apprenticeship, undergone in Southern India, of rituals drawings traced with powder on the ground: the kolam, which appear on the doorstep of Tamil houses at dawn, and the kalam, carried out during Kerala ritual ceremonies. They are ephemeral drawings, in which tracings and erasings alternate within a sacred movement which makes and unmakes. The dialogue between ritual and artistic practices is envisaged on the basis of this experience, opening up to a proximity with the anthropological approach. Above and beyond the religious, what parallels can be drawn between artistic practices and rituals, Indian rituals in particular? In this interval the practice reveals itself and engages the fertile collaboration with different dancers, who become mediums in the open space of the performance, which renders visible the drawing’s process of mutation. The drawing is analysed in its successive transpositions from the ground to the dancers’ bodies, to the space of the installation, playing instantaneously on the threshold of the visible, disappearing in the gesture of effacement which becomes the essential gesture in this access to the ritual. The drawing propulses the bodies’ actions. In these ritual practices, what can – or cannot – be conveyed, and thus destabilize the practice of drawing which, by this means, becomes both trajectory and process? Finally what do these rituals have to do with us, visual artists, despite their profound opaqueness?

This master thesis "Specifics of Marketing Communication Targeted on Seniors and Unfair Practices Against Them" aims to familiarize the reader with the ways and coercive methods by which traders force seniors to buy overpriced goods or services during the selling events or doorstep sales. Another aim is to identify the reasons that lead elderly to attend sales events, or use the services of door-to-door seller. Next, I will try to make recommendations to public authorities and elderly how to prevent unfair trade practices. The thesis also deals with legal regulations, the demographic situation and development, and manipulation.

While the strategy of lending a voice to the monstrous is a well known aspect of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's works, the female monster is a notable exception to this case. In this thesis, I excavate a theory of female monstrosity through a reading of some of Lovecraft's most read stories and the agency of female characters that appears within. Comparing these female registers of monstrosity to their masculine counterpart, I develop a concept of female monstrosity manifested through categories of class, race and gender with the help of Judith Halberstams theories of monstrosity. Rather than treating these women as active characters, I argue that Lovecraft's inability to handle these monsters forces him to literally put them away – in attics, cellars, or boxes. These are the marginalized positions from which these women elaborate a monstrous form that transcends the boundaries of sex, gender, class and race. Here lurks a female monster, powerful, independent and evil, Lovecraft's treatment of which reveals his fear of its unfettered emergence. Thus Lovecraft’s narrative technique is broken by his own creation. Indeed, these women, in their reproductive capabilities and the monstrous motherhood they represent, are the true monsters of the Lovecraftian universe.