Monsters both enforce and expose the fragility of human boundaries

Evidence

One of the ways in particular in which the boundaries between humans and almost-humans have been asserted is through the discourse of ‘monstrosity.’ Monsters serve to mark the fault-lines but also, subversively, to signal the fragility of such boundaries. They are truly ‘monstrous’—as in things shown and displayed—in their simultaneous demonstration and destabilization of the demarcations by which cultures have separated nature from artifice, human from non-human, normal from pathological. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 642

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘monstrosity’ as a discourse that simultaneously demonstrates and destabilizes the human/non-human demarcation—a precise analytical category for the reader.
• DEEPTHINKING: The dual function of the monster—reinforcing and undermining the boundary at once—is dense enough to sit with for days.