Shildrick’s monster: exploring a new approach to difference/disability through collective biography

Abstract

Working with memories generated in a collective biography workshop on difference/disability and drawing in particular on Shildrick’s analysis of monstrosity, this article analyses the ambivalent processes through which difference is othered and abjected. The article argues that through the process of abjection we disown for ourselves whatever qualities are being categorised as monstrous, with negative effects not just on the other, but also on the self. We look at the ambivalence of ‘reclaiming the monster’. This article opens up an alternative of expanding the possibilities of being by focusing not on difference as categorical otherness, but rather difference as movement, as differenciation, or becoming.

Keywords:

• Monster
• othering
• abjecting
• normativity
• intra-action
• collective biography