Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Gent

This lecture is part of the Dag van de Filosofie, tickets will be available starting from February 10 via www.dagvandefilosofie.be

Monsters and the monstrous have always evoked the contradictory responses of fascination and fear. The boundaries between the human and the monstrous are dangerously porous and how these boundaries are drawn works to define who we are and how we define the normal (body). A sense of ontological, epistemological and ethical uncertainty and confusion that can resolve either in outright horror at the human inability to control a seemingly threatening materiality, or in a move towards alternative and more hopeful modes of becoming.

It’s little exaggeration to say that the representation of the monstrous/the anomalously embodied/the strange leaks and flows across material, political, philosophical, artistic and bioscientific imaginaries alike. The very excessiveness of corporeality that promises to productively transgress conventional expectations and boundaries can be both scholarly and fun, and under conditions of promise can revalue what has been figured as the excluded other.

Following the lecture, Margrit Shildrick will engage in a conversation with Professor of Ethics and Moral Philosophy Seppe Segers. This afternoon is a collaboration between the Dag van de Filosofie, Ghent University and Studium Generale Gent.