New World monsters repeated medieval Other-anxieties rather than reflecting observed reality

Evidence

Much like Jewish and Muslim cynocephalie, Black Saracens, and giants of the Middle Ages, New World monsters were a product of anxieties about the Other that were “imbedded within or distorted by demonizing fantasies.” The European fantasies of the Wild Man and Woman are evident in descriptions of American Indians as “savage and incontinent,” “unable to manage their own affairs,” with a “child-like mentality.” Paintings, drawings, and other artistic representations all testify to the monstrous races that purportedly occupied South America resembling Amazons, giants, and other ancient monsters. All of this is not surprising, given the medieval mindset that was still in force at the time of conquest. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 582

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to the reader’s question of what the monster lets its makers avoid seeing: medieval anxieties projected whole onto the Americas. — connects to: Fantasy ideology smuggles feudal nostalgia into imagined other worlds — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1104