Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues' Le musee noir is a collection of short stories insidiously permeated by the monster figure in its most diverse forms. Far from being reduced to a simple thematic function, this omnipresence of the monstrous contributes to making the collection truly a whole by instilling it with an internal mode of operation. This rhetoric of the monstrous directs both the collection and each of the stories, all the while driving their dynamic of the fantastic. / The mandiarguian text acquires its fantastic dimension through a progressive transformation of the protagonist's point of view, inciting him to perceive his environment as a gigantic monstrous entity. Contact with this entity causes the protagonist's own personality to be replaced by that of the monster. Yet it is the woman who, as a representative of the sacred in the logic of fantastic stories, remains in Mandiargues' text the best incarnation of the monstrous figure. Man, who represents the profane, will emerge contaminated by the sacred from his encounter with the monstrous and devouring woman. This contagion is incarnated by the androgynous figure, which remains most convincingly represented within this work by the negro. Finally, by comparing Mandiargues' writing devices with the techniques used in horror museums of old for monsters stage exhibitions, we will be able to confirm our initial hypothesis: the monster figure, by being the motor of the fantastic element dynamic, is essential to the unity of the collection. / The second part of this work in literary creation is a collection of fantastic short stories, all of which feature the same troubling presence. This presence possesses several characteristics of the monster figure, as seen in the work of Mandiargues.

The Sentimental/Gothic myth, which dominates much of English and American literature during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, represents a cultural attempt to achieve unity, but the attempt is foredoomed because the essence of the myth is division. The myth's metaphor is sexual. The division that forms the acknowledged basis of the myth is that between two modes of being, seen as sexual modes: masculinity (power, aggression, violence, energy, dominance, etc.) and femininity (attraction, passivity, submissiveness, etc.). The unity sought by the myth on its acknowledged level is domestic harmony, the infusion of masculine strength into feminine passivity, the taming of masculine power by feminine submissiveness. Thus the myth regardsmarriage as the perfect state and the family as the perfect model of cultural unity. But the myth itself is flawed by a further division, of which the masculine/feminine division is actually a reflection: this is a division of the conscious, Sentimental myth from the largely unconscious Gothic myth. The Gothic, reversing the acknowledged direction of the myth (or carrying it full-circle to its inevitable conclusion), seeks the destruction of femininity by masculinity, the throwing off of feminine submissiveness by masculine violence. Thus it regards death(the "marriage" of murderer and victim) as the perfect state, and sterility, the blasted family, as the perfect model of unity.Mary Shelley's Frankenstein reflects both mythic divisions and their close interrelationship. Its hero seeks to establish his Sentimental masculinity and to achieve domestic unity, but in doing so creates the Gothic Monster who destroys the creator's beloved, his family, and finally drains life from the hero himself. Frankenstein, in form, themes, and characterization, reflects the ironies by which the Sentimental/Gothic myth is divided against itself, and shows the tragic consequences of its divisions.

The focus of this thesis is the examination of whiteness as a dominant identity and subject position. Whiteness has conventionally assumed a normative, monolithic status as the template of humanity. Recent theorising has attempted to specify and denaturalise whiteness. In order to participate in this fracturing of whiteness, I analyse examples in which it functions as a site of contested and ambiguous contradiction. To this end, I use contemporary monstrosity to examine whiteness. Monstrosity is a malleable and culturally specific category of difference that measures alterity, and by displaying discursive functions in an extreme form offers insight into the ways in which deviance and normativity operate. I argue that the conjunction of whiteness and monstrosity, through displaying whiteness in a negative register, depicts some of the discursive operations that enable whiteness to attain such hegemonic dominance. I deploy theories of marginalisation and subjectivation drawn from a variety of feminist, critical race, and philosophical perspectives in order to further an understanding of the discursive operations of hegemonic and normative subject positions. I offer a brief history and overview of both the history and prior conceptualisations of monstrosity and whiteness, and then focus on two particular examples of contemporary white monstrosity. I closely examine the representation of monstrosity in serial killer films. The figure of the serial killer is typically a white, heterosexual, middle class male whose monstrosity is implicitly reliant upon these elements. In my discussion of the recent phenomenon of fatal shootings at high schools in North America, I investigate the way the massacre at Columbine High School functions as the public face of the phenomenon and for the unique interest it generated in the mass media. I focus on a Time magazine cover that featured a photograph of the adolescent perpetrators under the heading The Monsters Next Door, which condensed and emblematised the tension that they generated. It is through the perpetrators uneasy occupation of dual subject positions???namely the unassuming all American boy and the contemporary face of evil???that their simultaneous representation as average and alien undermines the notion of whiteness as neutral and invisible.

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This thesis is concerned with the conditions of generating a livable Karoo landscape and the arts of living on a damaged Karoo veld. It takes place in a context where the anthropogenic influences on land degradation, desertification and biodiversity loss continues to haunt the Karoo in the present. The Karoo is a semi-arid region that spans the interior of South Africa. It is also region that has been subject to ongoing and widespread concern of the impact of overgrazing, threatening the livability of the Karoo landscape. This is a result of human/nonhuman relations that have been grounded in a colonial mastery of the land, whereby the advent of private property regimes, modernist technologies and capitalist extraction has allowed for the land to be cheapened, exhausted and severely degraded in a process of colonial dispossession. This research is a qualitative ethnography interacting with farmers and nonhumans on rangelands in the Great Karoo. This thesis shows how the earlier degradation of the Karoo has demanded farmersto pay attention to the relationalities between ecology and economy, since their economic/ecological survival depends entirely on the ongoing multispecies assemblages of which humans form a part. Infrastructures and technologies have become grounds for new ontological practices of regenerating the Karoo veld. Infrastructures (namely fencing) and sheep are used in ways that mimic the earlier migration of large herds of antelope. Here, the bodies of sheep are curated and moved in order to perform a particular ordering of a Karoo ‘nature’. This movement is believed to instigate multispecies liveliness. Sheep, who were once destroyers of the veld, are now enrolled in practices that are believed to bring back the ‘natural’ vegetation of the Karoo. The thesis problematises the ongoing Western ways of knowing that separate the world into binaries of ‘nature’/’culture’, ‘human’/’non-human’, ‘subject’/object’, ‘domestic’/‘wild’, ’economy’/‘ecology’, ‘life’/‘death’. Rather, it argues that a concern with ontological plurality is a process of paying attention to the mutual ecologies and multiple species that gather in human/nonhuman worlding projects on rangelands in the Karoo.

This thesis is a short story collection revolving around the central theme of pop culture. The first story, "After the Win," follows the character Cecil, whose wife Rhonda has recently won The Great British Bake Off. Trouble ensues in Cecil and Rhonda's family as Rhonda starts to focus on her post-Bake Off fame instead of her relationships with her husband and daughter. "Making Friends with a Monster" is about Rick, a half-human, half-lake monster living on the shores of Bear Lake. Because of his existence in an in-between place between man and monster, Rick struggles to find companionship in life. That is, until Anna (AKA the Loch Ness Monster) arrives in his lake and presents him with an enticing offer: to return with her to Loch Ness. The story culminates in Rick's decision. The next story, "The Fourth Wall," is the story of Max and Abby, who are close to getting engaged. Max confronts Abby about her family, who she has never told him much about. Finally, she agrees to take him for a visit to meet her parents. As soon as Max arrives, it becomes apparent that Abby's parents believe they are Ricky and Lucy from the beloved sitcom I Love Lucy, and Max is soon sucked in to the illusion. The last story in the collection is "Feelin' Groovy in Point Pleasant, West Virginia,"which is the tale of a Simon and Garfunkel tribute band that encounters the legendary Mothman monster in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, who happens to be an avid Simon and Garfunkel fan.

This thesis is a short story collection revolving around the central theme of pop culture. The first story, "After the Win," follows the character Cecil, whose wife Rhonda has recently won The Great British Bake Off. Trouble ensues in Cecil and Rhonda's family as Rhonda starts to focus on her post-Bake Off fame instead of her relationships with her husband and daughter. "Making Friends with a Monster" is about Rick, a half-human, half-lake monster living on the shores of Bear Lake. Because of his existence in an in-between place between man and monster, Rick struggles to find companionship in life. That is, until Anna (AKA the Loch Ness Monster) arrives in his lake and presents him with an enticing offer: to return with her to Loch Ness. The story culminates in Rick's decision. The next story, "The Fourth Wall," is the story of Max and Abby, who are close to getting engaged. Max confronts Abby about her family, who she has never told him much about. Finally, she agrees to take him for a visit to meet her parents. As soon as Max arrives, it becomes apparent that Abby's parents believe they are Ricky and Lucy from the beloved sitcom I Love Lucy, and Max is soon sucked in to the illusion. The last story in the collection is "Feelin' Groovy in Point Pleasant, West Virginia,"which is the tale of a Simon and Garfunkel tribute band that encounters the legendary Mothman monster in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, who happens to be an avid Simon and Garfunkel fan.

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In the first two centuries of European exploration of North America, accounts of monsters, including ones given by Indigenous guides, were largely accepted by Europeans as reflecting actual creatures. Gradually, under the influence of a range of factors, this dynamic shifted over time. Continued exploration, the spread of Enlightenment ideas, and changing material circumstances led to a decline in the belief in monsters—or at least put the belief in them beyond respectability, thereby enlarging the cultural gulf between various Indigenous cultures and European explorers and settlers, or at least the social elite of that latter group. In Canada, as argued here, the “sasquatch” was a hybrid creation combining Indigenous and European traditions; the windigo was an Indigenous monster tradition; the “grisly bear” was predominately a monster of the European imagination. Perceptions of each in European exploration literature followed a similar trajectory of increasing skepticism. Each evolved from creatures that were depicted as innately hostile or dangerous into somewhat more benign pop culture images as they lost their potency once the frontier receded and North America urbanized. As the gap in perspectives on monsters widened in exploration and frontier literature over the course of the nineteenth century, new narratives emerged that were much more negative in their depictions of Indigenous peoples. Frequently, this negativity, when connected with monster legends, depicted Indigenous peoples as cowardly or superstitious. With the sasquatch, European stereotypes about Indigenous people had by the 1870s partially supplanted what had once been a sense of genuine mystery regarding this frontier legend. The exploitation of windigo stories to portray Indigenous peoples as cowardly and superstitious also arose mainly after the 1870s, as earlier generations of explorers and fur traders had exhibited more receptive attitudes. Meanwhile many voyageurs and lower status trappers retained beliefs on monsters closer to their Indigenous counterparts, and as a result were often lumped into the same category as sharing premodern, superstitious beliefs by their social elites. Finally, in the third example, the “grisly bear” became a bloodthirsty monster in the European settler imagination. It was the last mainstream European monster myth, before it too largely faded away in the face of skeptical inquiry. However, such skepticism, voiced normally from afar, frequently misunderstood and misconstrued the nature of these legends, and the truths they had contained. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)