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The method of considering a monster, at first, appears very unproblematic: a monster is evil. Its horror, the scariness of the monster, arises from confronting the alienated, from facing the absolute other. The monster provokes an intense, immediate, if not categorical, response: revulsion, fear, terror. The instinct to reject, to turn away, coupled with the impulse not to engage the monster is common, and most entanglements with monsters are determined by necessity, usually for personal or social necessity, safety or preservation. Yet, this distancing from the monster creates the very space for monsters to exist and to flourish. At the moment we abject the monster to preserve conventional order, we consciously or unconsciously deny the presence of the possible disruption of that order, casting the monster into the liminal space created by our own fears or denials. From this space, the monster irrupts into the stability of the …