This Monster
A good friend of mine wrote the below about my namesake on October 7, 2003 at 2:31p.m. It so lucidly expressed the why of my namesake I felt the testimonial worthy of posting. Insight into a little monster:
Monster - not as “misfortune” (Latin “monstrum”), but in another sense: “anything extraordinary, supernatural, or wonderful; a thing to be wondered at; a prodigy” (Century Dictionary, 1898). Monstrosity as a category works double-time — it “expresse[s] rather than violate[s] the created order of nature at the same time that it expresses a singularity, a fundamental difference that challenges rather than supports dominant conceptions of order”. This contradiction is, if I may say so, Mici’s very heart: like the etc., she is part and parcel of rational organizational schemata; at the same time, the very miscellaneous quality of her particular monstrosity cuts to the heart of, with a defiant challenge to, order. In this sense, her primary function is interruption by way of what Emmanuel Levinas identifies as “skepticism, an affront (such as can only be introduced by way of monstrosity) to the violent logics of State and closure”. All this is another way of saying that Mici is the shadow that follows philosophy, only to challenge its authority by way of a radicalized alterity that cannot be consumed by the Same.
by Nathan Austin (Works cited: “Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia”, 1898 edition. “Wonders and the Order of Nature” by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Parks. “Otherwise Than Being, or, Beyond Essence” by Emmanuel Levinas.)
