The power of the Monstrous: An introduction to the special issue

Abstract

Alterity and Otherness have often been the privileged field of contemplation within Western philosophy. Since the Presocratic philosophers, Being has been defined in relation to – and more often opposed to – non-Being, just as Goodness has been considered in relation to Evil, Beauty in relation to the Ugly, Society in relation to Nature, and the examples could be multiplied ad libitum. Every identity is shaped in opposition to an excluded other, an outside, or some thing. Identity and alterity are thus constructed as two inseparable sides of a single, coherent philosophical discourse, or rather a field of various discourses that comprise a philosophy, associated with - although not limited to - the early centuries of what we call modernity.