Orders - whether figurative, political, or social - always constitute themselves through what they exclude as foreign: the genuinely Other, the monstrous, and the insane. This volume addresses the abnormal as a paradigmatic figure of deviation, while simultaneously raising the question of the norms and normalities whose transgression it marks. Following thinkers such as Benjamin, Foucault, Agamben, and Legendre, the interdisciplinary contributions profile a concept of the monstrous that can be operationalized for text, image, and performance analyses, from which a typology of monstrous figures and an aesthetics of monstrous procedures can be derived.

Achim Geisenhanslke, born in 1965, teaches General and Comparative Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. His research focuses on literary theory and European literature from the 17th to the 21st century. Georg Mein (Prof. Dr.) teaches in the Department of Literature and Interculturality, Modern German Literary Studies, Linguistics, and Medieval Studies at the University of Luxembourg. His areas of work and research include literature from the 18th century to the present, media and cultural theories, literary sociology, and literacy studies.