Hegel, Derrida, and Restricted Economy: The Case of Mechanical Memory STEPHEN HOULGA'FE A GLANCE AT THE TEXTS OF Jacques Derrida and at the texts and lectures of G. W. F. Hegel indicates that Hegel and Derrida are extraordi- narily different thinkers. Hegel is clearly what Derrida would regard as a philosopher of presence, working toward the point "where knowledge no longer needs to go beyond itself, where knowledge finds itself," where con- sciousness is present to itself as it is (...) in itself. 1 Derrida, on the other hand, suggests that everything that is present, here, now, at this moment, bears within it, as constitutive features of itself, the marks or traces of what is irredeemably past, and that, consequently, we can never talk of entities such as ourselves being simply or wholly present to themselves. ~ Derrida claims in Positions that he tries hard to distinguish "diff6rance" from tlegelian "differ- ence," indeed that "diff~rance" might well be defined precisely as "the inter- ruption, the destruction of Hegelian sublation [relive] wherever it operates"; and, to judge at least from the look of his texts, he would seem to have G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwamag B~inden, edited by E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel, 20 vols. and Index, Ill [Phi~nomenologie des Geistes], 74. For the English translation, see Hegel, Phenomenolog) of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller, with analysis of the... (shrink)

Hegel, Derrida, and Restricted Economy: The Case of Mechanical Memory STEPHEN HOULGA'FE A GLANCE AT THE TEXTS OF Jacques Derrida and at the texts and lectures of G. W. F. Hegel indicates that Hegel and Derrida are extraordi- narily different thinkers. Hegel is clearly what Derrida would regard as a philosopher of presence, working toward the point "where knowledge no longer needs to go beyond itself, where knowledge finds itself," where con- sciousness is present to itself as it is (...) in itself. 1 Derrida, on the other hand, suggests that everything that is present, here, now, at this moment, bears within it, as constitutive features of itself, the marks or traces of what is irredeemably past, and that, consequently, we can never talk of entities such as ourselves being simply or wholly present to themselves. ~ Derrida claims in Positions that he tries hard to distinguish "diff6rance" from tlegelian "differ- ence," indeed that "diff~rance" might well be defined precisely as "the inter- ruption, the destruction of Hegelian sublation [relive] wherever it operates"; and, to judge at least from the look of his texts, he would seem to have G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwamag B~inden, edited by E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel, 20 vols. and Index , Ill [Phi~nomenologie des Geistes], 74. For the English translation, see Hegel, Phenomenolog) of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller, with analysis of the.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:36. HUME'S SECOND THOUGHTS ON THE SELF* 1_. Although the appendix in which Hume confesses disillusionment with the Treatise theory of personal identity is very puzzling and confusing, there have been few serious attempts to explicate it. Wade L. Robison's recent paper, "Hume on Personal Identity," goes a long way toward making up for this lack, and I concur with much of what Robison says. Nonetheless, I think further (...) light can be shed on Hume's thinking, and I will attempt to do so in what follows. 1_. Hume reports that a review of his discussion of personal identity reveals problems so severe and difficult that he does not "know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent." After summarizing the arguments that led him to the Treatise view of personal identity, he offers this explanation of the discovery inconsistency : In short, there are two principles which I cannot render consistent, nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, vis. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connection among distinct existences. (636)¿ The trouble with this explanation is that there appears to be no inconsistency at all between these two principles. Many commentators have simply passed over this fact, perhaps because Hume's theory of self-identity has seemed so preposterous that they have felt it obvious that he would be unhappy with it. * This paper grew out of my contribution to a colloquium at the 1974 Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association. I would like to express my thanks to Norman Melchert, whose paper stimulated my werk on this topic. 37. Others -- such as Norman Kemp Smith and John Passmore, in addition to Robison -- have claimed that Hume was incorrect in placing the inconsistency and have suggested more suitable candidates for the source of Hume's doubts. This failure to take the author at his word about what disturbed him may appear too presumptuous a move for a commentator to make, but the appendix provides strong evidence that Hume was quite confused and could easily have misstated or misidentified his problem. For example, Hume begins by saying that he will offer the arguments "on both sides" -- that is, the arguments that led him to adopt this theory of personal identity and those now causing him to doubt it. In fact, however, while he gives a neat summary of the arguments for the Treatise theory, he says nothing about the grounds for his new doubts. In addition, the statement of the two principles is introduced by the words "in short," as if Hume were providing a mere summary of what he had just said. The preceding passage, however, makes no mention of and is in no way concerned with the two principles. What is offered as a summary is no summary at all. Added to the apparent consistency of the two principles, these facts provide strong grounds for thinking Hume was quite confused. As such, they support those commentators who have felt forced to look elsewhere for the source of Hume's dissatisfaction. Robison' s most concise statements of his own interpretation of the problem are as follows: Hume's explanation of why we think we have an idea of the self depends upon there being a self... But he has argued that we can have no idea of such a self so that we cannot conceive it as existing, let alone guarantee its existence. (190)...we all think we have an idea of the self... Hume has to explain this fact, and...the sort of explanation he used appeals to the existence of an active self distinct from any bundle of perceptions and propensities... (192) Robison is correct, I think, on the basic point: the inconsistency is between Hume's bundle analysis of the self and his explanation of why we mistakenly believe there is a per- 38. sistent self. I differ with him, however, on two points. First, I think that his contrast between an active mind and a set of propensities is incorrect. That the Humean self has propensities is itself sufficient to generate Hume's problem... (shrink)

Herbert Spencer's Evolutionstheorie - Dargestellt, beurteillt und mit einer Ubersicht uber die Geschichte des Entwicklungsbegriffes versehen ist ein unveranderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1896. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernahrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres.Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur.Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitaten erhaltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bucher neu und tragt damit zum Erhalt selten (...) gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch fur die Zukunft bei.". (shrink)

The experience of having to suffer debilitating pain is far too common in the United States, and many patients continue to be inadequately treated by their doctors. Although many physicians freely admit that their pain management practices may have been somewhat lacking, many more express concern that the prescribing of heightened levels of opioid analgesics may result in closer regulatory scrutiny, criminal investigation, or even criminal prosecution.Although several researchers have examined the regulatory environment and the threat of sanction or harm (...) it poses to physicians and patients, few have examined the likelihood of investigation or prosecution stemming from the aggressive use of opioids in physician-directed pain management. Accordingly, in an effort to assess whether the fear of prosecution is realistic and, if so, what factors contribute to its likelihood, we surveyed chief prosecutors in four states about their knowledge, opinions, and attitudes concerning opioids and the prosecution of physicians stemming from the treatment of patients who were either terminally ill or suffering from chronic noncancer pain. (shrink)

Today humanity faces radical global climate change, mass species extinctions, and unprecedented transformations to both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems across the globe. Environmental ethics is an academic subfield of philosophy concerned with normative and evaluative propositions about the world of nature and, perhaps more generally, the moral fabric of relations between human beings and the world we occupy. This Handbook contains 45 newly commissioned essays written by leading experts and emerging voices and represent some of the best and most contemporary (...) thinking in environmental ethics. The chapters range over a broad variety of issues, concepts, and perspectives that are both central to and characteristic of the field, thus providing an authoritative but accessible account of the history, analysis, and prospect of ideas that are essential to contemporary environmental ethics. (shrink)

In light of many recent critiques of Western modernity and its conceptual foundations, the problem of adequately justifying our most basic moral and political values looms large. Without recourse to traditional ontological or metaphysical foundations, how can one affirm — or sustain — a commitment to fundamentals? The answer, according to Stephen White, lies in a turn to “weak” ontology, an approach that allows for ultimate commitments but at the same time acknowledges their historical, contestable character. This turn, White (...) suggests, is already underway. His book traces its emergence in a variety of quarters in political thought today and offers a clear and compelling account of what this might mean for our late modern self-understanding. (shrink)

This article examines the development of the concept of the value chain from the linear to the virtual conception of the chain, through the evolution of the literature from Michael Porter’s writings of the mid 1990s to the theorists of e-business and e-commerce in the later 1990s I argue that Porter’s account employs white metaphors and that writings on the virtual value chain both extend the white metaphors of Porter’s linear chain, and suggest a pronouncedly metaphysical system of thought — (...) one which has correlates in areas of thought, including Renaissance Neo-Platonism, cybernetics and the discourse of cyberspace. I suggest that this offers a model of the advance of metaphor — of its usure, as described by Derrida in his White Mythology — and that this model can be synthesised with the views of Ricoeur about the evolution of metaphor towards symbolism. When we apply these ideas of Derrida and Ricoeur to the development of the White Metaphor of the linear chain towards a progressive symbolism, we can see a correlation between the complex causality inferred as a feature of the virtual chain and the cosmological affinities of Renaissance notions of causation. (shrink)

In a passage in A Theory of Justice, which has become increasingly influential in recent years, John Rawls (1971) noted an analogy between moral phi- losophy and grammar. Moral philosophy, or at least the first stage of moral philosophy, Rawls maintained, can be thought of as the attempt to describe our moral capacity – the capacity which underlies “the poten- tially infinite number and variety of [moral] judgments we are prepared..

In a recent issue of this journal, Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno presented a counterfactual theory of essence, designed to get around Kit Fine’s influential objections to the standard modal account of essence. I argue that Brogaard and Salerno’s theory does not avoid Fine’s objections. Then I propose a sequence of variations on their theory, and argue that none of them succeed either.

1 Introducing Monsieur Foucault Stephen J. Ball Michel Foucault is an enigma, a massively influential intellectual who steadfastly refused to align himself ...

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

In The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen, Stephen K. White contends that Western democracies face novel challenges demanding our reexamination of the role of citizens. White argues that the intense focus in the past three decades on finding general principles of justice for diversity-rich societies needs to be complemented by an exploration of what sort of ethos would be needed to adequately sustain any such principles. Accessible, pithy, and erudite, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen will appeal to a (...) wide audience. (shrink)

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night…John 3: 1–2A lady asked the famous Lord Shaftesbury what religion he was of. He answered the religion of wise men. She asked, what was that? He answered, wise men never tell.Diary of Viscount Percival , i, 113NEWTON AS HERETICIsaac Newton was a heretic. But like Nicodemus, the secret disciple of Jesus, he never made a public declaration of his private (...) faith – which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unravelling his personal beliefs. His one-time follower William Whiston attributed his policy of silence to simple, human fear and there must be some truth in this. Every day as a public figure and as the figurehead of British natural philosophy, Newton must have felt the tension of outwardly conforming to the Anglican Church, while inwardly denying much of its faith and practice. He was restricted by heresy laws, religious tests and the formidable opposition of public opinion. Heretics were seen as religiously subversive, socially dangerous and even morally debased. Moreover, the positions he enjoyed were dependent on public manifestations of religious and social orderliness. Sir Isaac had a lot to lose. Yet he knew the scriptural injunctions against hiding one's light under a bushel. Newton the believer was thus faced with the need to develop a modus vivendi whereby he could work within legal and social structures, while fulfilling the command to shine in a dark world. This paper recovers and assesses his strategies for reconciling these conflicting dynamics and, in so doing, will shed light on both the nature of Newton's faith and his agenda for natural philosophy. (shrink)

The debate over recombinant DNA research is a unique event, perhaps a turning point, in the history of science. For the first time in modern history there has been widespread public discussion about whether and how a promising though potentially dangerous line of research shall be pursued. At root the debate is a moral debate and, like most such debates, requires proper assessment of the facts at crucial stages in the argument. A good deal of the controversy over recombinant DNA (...) research arises because some of the facts simply are not yet known. There are many empirical questions we would like to have answered before coming to a decision-questions about the reliability of proposed containment facilities, about the viability of enfeebled strains of E. coli, about the ways in which pathogenic organisms do their unwelcome work, and much more. But all decisions cannot wait until the facts are available; some must be made now. It is to be expected that people with different hunches about what the facts will turn out to be will urge different decisions on how recombinant DNA research should be regulated. However, differing expectations about the facts have not been the only fuel for controversy. A significant part of the current debate can be traced to differences over moral principles. Also, unfortunately, there has been much unnecessary debate generated by careless moral reasoning and a failure to attend to the logical structure of some of the moral arguments that have been advanced. (shrink)

Descartes' Meditations is one of the most thoroughly analyzed of all philosophical texts. Nevertheless, central issues in Descartes' thought remain unresolved, particularly the problem of the Cartesian Circle. Most attempts to deal with that problem have weakened the force of Descartes' own doubts or weakened the goals he was seeking. In this book, Stephen I. Wagner gives Descartes' doubts their strongest force and shows how he overcomes those doubts, establishing with metaphysical certainty the existence of a non-deceiving God and (...) the truth of his clear and distinct perceptions. Wagner's innovative and thorough reading of the text clarifies a wide range of other issues that have been left unclear by previous commentaries, including the nature of the cogito discovery and the relationship between Descartes' proofs of God's existence. His book will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of Descartes, early modern philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Sir Leslie Stephen, the founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, and a writer on philosophy, ethics, and literature, was educated at Eton, King's College London and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained as a fellow and a tutor for a number of years. Though a sickly child, he later became a keen and successful mountaineer, taking part in first ascents of nine peaks in the Alps. In 1871 he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine. During his eleven-year (...) tenure, he wrote two successful books on ethics, including The Science of Ethics in 1892, which was widely adopted as a standard textbook. This two-volume work, which was first published in 1896, brings together the lectures he gave to various ethical societies, mostly in London. In Volume 2, he discusses the ethical issues surrounding a range of topics, including luxury, heredity, crime and punishment, and duty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“The Whole Internal World His Own”: Locke and Metaphor ReconsideredS. H. ClarkWhy need I name thy Boyle, whose pious search, Amid the dark recesses of his works, The great Creator sought? And why thy Locke, Who made the whole internal world his own?Oh decus! Anglicae certe oh lux altera gentis!... Tu caecas rerum causas, fontemque severum Pande, Pater; tibi enim, tibi, veri magne Sacerdos, Corda patent hominum, atque altae (...) penetralia Mentis.Fourfold Annihilation & at the clangor of the Arrows of Intellect The innumerable Chariots of the Almighty appeard in Heaven And Bacon & Newton & Locke, & Milton & Shakespear & Chaucer1Two features of these encomia to John Locke, composed by James Thomson, Thomas Gray, and William Blake, are immediately striking. Firstly, they are delivered by poets in a tradition customarily seen as a reaction to the intellectual climate induced by Locke’s Essay, a book which Blake famously claimed to regard with “Contempt and Abhorrence.” 2 Secondly, the familiar and somewhat hackneyed characterizations of Locke as philosopher of common-sense, [End Page 241] empiricism, and liberal ideology are refreshingly absent. For Gray he is “veri magne Sacerdos,” great priest of truth; Thomson places him in a pantheon including Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and Chaucer; and this ranking is explicitly endorsed in Blake’s “Milton & Shakspear & Chaucer.” Comparable praise of Locke’s imaginative power is conspicuously absent from even the most generous tributes of recent commentators. 3Even if Locke’s philosophical contribution to a variety of debates is fully acknowledged, the question remains of why his major work, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, was held in such high popular esteem—veneration is not too strong a word—during the subsequent century. The text itself appears an improbable candidate for such canonization: George Saintsbury accused its prose of being “positively mean in every point of style,” 4 and certainly in comparison with the poised and lucid ironies of Berkeley and Hume, it cannot but appear prolix, diffuse, and repetitive. The chief (and frequently only) merit grudgingly accorded to it is of disarming informality. Rosalie Colie’s emphasis on the “exploitation of the generic and rhetorical possibilities in the essay form itself “ highlights the conscious manipulation of authorial distance through which Locke creates the effect of sprawling inclusiveness and incom-pletion, but at the expense of conceding that “in exchange for the frankness with which the essayist appeared to present his thinking self, he was allowed certain liberties from logical rigour.” 5 Though the suggestion that a major philosophical text seeks to evade “logical rigour” might seem damning enough, there is a still more insidious equation of Locke’s “middle-style,” his desire “to make, what I have to say, as easie and intelligible to all sort of Readers as I can,” with a complicity with the expectations of his audience. 6 Other critics, notably John Richetti, have put a more positive gloss on the “simple and fortuitously concocted circle of friends” to whom the Essay is addressed, but even these accounts have been obliged to stress the representative and consensual nature of Locke’s thought. 7 This view is perhaps most elegantly expressed by Leslie Stephen: “Locke ruled the thought of his own and the coming period [End Page 242] because he interpreted so completely the fundamental beliefs which had been worked out at this time. He ruled, that is, by obeying.” 8William Walker correctly observes that “identifying and interpreting metaphors of mind” in the Essay are “standard practices of mainstream philosophical commentary from Leibniz to Rorty,” but also notes that these analyses are usually concerned with the degree to which Locke’s reliance on figuration was at variance with and compromised his epistemological doctrine. 9 I would argue that the poetic tributes previously quoted offer a more suggestive and adequate guide to the original impact of his work. In order to substantiate this claim, I shall begin by examining Locke’s apparent renunciation of, yet paradoxical dependence upon metaphor; go on to look at the connection of the “Horizon” to the elegiac presentation of memory and the ethic of mental “Labour”; and conclude by analyzing the complex interdependence of candle and sun within the light imagery employed in the... (shrink)

Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics, and Aesthetics examines the philosophy of Burke in view of its contribution to our understanding of modernity. Burke's relevance, until recently, has lain in how his critique of the French Revolution bolstered arguments against revolutionary communism. As that threat recedes, should we allow Burke's significance to recede as well? Stephen K. White argues that Burke remains important because he shows us how modernity engenders an implicit forgetfulness of human finitude. White illustrates this theme by showing (...) how Burke's political thought, his judgment of the 'modern system of morality and policy,' and its taste for a 'false sublime' are structured by his aesthetics. In the late 20th century, an undemocratic thinker such as Burke may not have answers to our problems, but we might do well to let him deepen the questions that we ask. (shrink)

Stephen Whicher's Freedom and Fate begins with a tribute to Ralph Rusk's monumental biography The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, acknowledging its supremacy as a factual telling of Emerson's life that cannot be surpassed. Whicher's book aims to be a complement to the painstakingly researched outer life of Emerson by focusing on the great sage's inner life—not just his intellectual biography but the very nature of his thinking. Whicher stresses the life of "spectator-ship" that the young Emerson, perpetually ill (...) as he turned out to be, was condemned to. His writings, especially his private thoughts recorded in his journals, document the ebb and flow of his spirit, alternatively listless and resolute. (shrink)

In Why We Think the Things We Think, author Alain Stephen attempts to demystify some of the key philosophical questions by tracing their origins and breaking them down into jargon-free, accessible form.

David Malament has recently responded to David Albert's argument that classical electrodynamics is not time-reversal invariant by introducing a novel conception of time reversal, which supports the conventional view that under time reversal the magnetic field changes sign but the electric field remains unchanged. I will argue here that Malament's transformation has both passive and active versions. I will claim that the passive version is not relevant to Albert's argument, and the active version does not lead to the conventional transformation.

Abstract:Appeal to intuition has played an important role in philosophical debates. Recent research in experimental philosophy empirically investigates philosophical intuitions, the factors that affect them, and the psychological and neurological mechanisms that underlie them. We distinguish between two common ways in which intuitions are used as philosophical evidence and present experimental philosophical studies that problematize these uses of philosophical intuitions. These studies indicate the influence of various prima facie irrelevant factors, such as language and order of presentation, on philosophical intuitions. (...) We consider three versions of the “expertise defense” of philosophical intuition and identify deficiencies in those defenses. We do not conclude that intuitions should never be used as philosophical evidence. Instead, we contend that experimental philosophy, broadly construed, has a crucial role to play in assessing and improving philosophical methodology Resumo: O apelo à intuição desempenhou até o presente um papel importante em debates filosóficos. Pesquisas recentes em filosofia experimental examinam as intuições filosóficas empiricamente, os fatores que as afetam e os mecanismos psicológicos e neurológicos que as subjazem. Distinguimos entre dois modos comuns nos quais as intuições são usadas como evidência filosófica e apresentamos estudos experimentais filosóficos que problematizam esses usos das intuições filosóficas. Esses estudos indicam a iFilosofia nfluência de diversos fatores prima facie irrelevantes, como a linguagem e a ordem de apresentação. Consideramos três versões da “defesa do especialista” da intuição filosófica e identificamos deficiências nessas defesas. Não concluímos que as intuições nunca devam ser usadas como evidência filosófica. Em vez disso, argumentamos que a filosofia experimental, amplamente concebida, tem um papel crucial a desempenhar na avaliação e na melhoria da metodologia filosófica. (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas is unquestionably one of the foremost philosophers writing today. His notions of communicative action and rationality have exerted a profound influence within philosophy and the social sciences. This volume examines the historical and intellectual contexts out of which Habermas' work emerged, and offers an overview of his main ideas, including those in his most recent publication. Amongst the topics discussed are his relationship to the Frankfurt School of critical theory and Marx, his unique contributions to the philosophy of (...) the social sciences, the concept of 'communicative ethics', and the critique of post-modernism. New readers and non-specialists will find this the most convenient, accessible guide to Habermas currently available. Advanced students will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Habermas. (shrink)

This paper discusses some problems with the field of educational studies and considers the role of post-structuralist theory in shifting the study of education away from a 'technical rationalist' approach (as evidenced in the case of much research on educational management and school effectiveness) towards an 'intellectual intelligence' stance that stresses contingency, disidentification and risk-taking.

Hailed as "a feast" (Washington Post) and "a modern-day bestiary" (The New Yorker), Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters--how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Beginning at the time of Alexander the Great, the monsters come fast and furious--Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenstein, circus freaks and headless children, (...) right up to the serial killers and terrorists of today and the post-human cyborgs of tomorrow. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory beyond the safe enclosures of rational thought. Exploring sources as diverse as philosophical treatises, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unravels traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations. In doing so, he illuminates the many ways monsters have become repositories for those human qualities that must be repudiated, externalized, and defeated. (shrink)