Event Type : Evil Hub

Revered as “givers of life,” bio-genealogical mothers occupy an important role in our world, often seen as the key to ensuring the ongoing survival of the human race. Though the bond between mother and child is commonly celebrated as sacred, cultural attitudes towards non-bio-genealogical parenting and child-rearing are often seen as inferior to the biological, nuclear family. At its worst, non-bio-genealogical and/or traditional families are condemned as threatening “traditional” family values, labelled as dangerous or “bad” for the children, “having an agenda,” or marked as deviant, perverse, or evil.

Queer theorists have criticized the ways heteronormativity, the nuclear family, and cultural pressures for citizens to reproduce, re-enforce oppressive systems including patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, heteronormativity and white supremacy. Therefore, our second annual conference on Bad Mothers aims to transcend beyond traditional and oversimplified understandings of motherhood, mothering, and child-rearing as purely bio-genealogical and hetero- and cis-normative. In doing so, we invite discussions on all forms of non-traditional parenting that may be constituted as “bad” or threatening to society to examine how queerness, fostering, adoption, surrogacy, and all forms of non-nuclear family child-rearing are pathologized as threatening and “bad.”

The purpose of Bad Mothers is not, in essence, to criticize or condemn certain types of motherhood, biological or not. Rather, we wish to look beyond the oversimplified cultural attitudes and expectations of motherhood to examine, question, and analyse the pathologizing and demonization of queer, non-heteronormative, and/or non-bio-genealogical family and parenting. In doing so we wish to examine alternative forms of mothering and parenting that imagine queer futures of family, parenting, and community building.

In recognition on of the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of motherhood, parenting, and the family, the Bad Mothers event seeks to provide a platform for participants to explore this multi-faceted topic with a view to forming a range of innovative interdisciplinary outputs, publications, courses and other materials and activities to engender further research and collaboration.

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Few things capture the human imagination as much as evil, a notoriously slippery concept that enjoys universal recognition yet defies easy definition. As a term which is frequently used in relation to people who commit appalling crimes, it provides a useful means of describing unimaginable wickedness and is bandied about in popular culture – particularly by the tabloid press – as a way of explaining behaviours which defy belief. Evil is something ‘more than’ doing something morally wrong, ‘more than’ simply committing a crime, ‘more than’ an act of senseless slaughter. Defining that ‘more than’ is difficult: it is precisely this elusive quality which seems to make an act, or a person, evil.

In many cultures, women have been long suspected as the source of sundry human miseries, however basic to society they may be. While ideals of purity and dedication to family have been exalted and feminine beauty lauded, women have been viewed as embodying sinister forces of evil. Mistrusted as seductive and beguiling, women are often thought of as vengeful, manipulative and even malevolent. In grappling with our understanding of what it is to be ‘evil’, the project aims to shine a spotlight on this dark area of the human condition and explore the possible sources of the fear and resentment of women. Women are not expected to behave in aberrant or illegal ways, and we will consider the structural and systemic reasons for the heightened interest, repulsion, condemnation – and even hatred – that feminine transgression generates. Women are condemned not only for what they do but also for what they fail to do; those who harbour, lie for and couple with nefarious men are seen to have failed in their duty as gatekeepers of male morality. Where women themselves are accused of evil they are often judged more harshly than their male counterparts, as evil acts committed by women are seen to transgress not just legal and moral boundaries but also those imposed by gender.

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Horror pervades our lives. The emotional experiences based on fear and dread it provides affect us both individually and collectively, and the fascination it exerts is undeniable and ancient, as evidenced by its lurking recurrence in mythologies, folklore, literature, cinema, historical narratives, and virtually every other field of human knowledge and realm of storytelling. The paradox of horror lies precisely in the fact we deem it simultaneously appealing and repulsive. We are taught to avoid that which is horrifying, but the appeal of horror, whether in the form of fiction or sensational news, is irresistible. Indeed, we simultaneously narrate, describe, imagine, consume, dread and crave horror in all of its dimensions, and with the most varied goals.

Horror taps into primal emotions of fear and disgust that are universal to the human condition, and finds expression across cultures and historical periods. Yet the texts that shape the ways in which horror is broadly understood historically reflect predominantly Anglo-European and American cultural, social, historical and geographical contexts.

Growing awareness and appreciation of the rich horror traditions of other countries around the world, including Japan, Korea, India, Brazil, Sudan, and Thailand, has highlighted the importance of considering horror in a global context. Accordingly, the Global Horror: Local Perspectives Project provides a platform for exploring the ways in which horror motifs and themes are expressed through the ‘local perspectives’ that inform the creative practices and daily life of particular nations and cultures.

It is not the intent of the Project to exclude Anglo-European and American perspectives from the conversation of global horror, but rather to focus on other horror traditions which have frequently been de-centred or completely overlooked in the past. The scope of the Project therefore includes work that explores marginalised local perspectives within Anglo-European and American horror, and work that examines Anglo-European and American horror from a global perspective with a view to forming an innovative interdisciplinary publication to engender further research and collaboration.

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“I’m hated, execrated, those I meet are repelled by me. They want me crucified, and maybe their feelings are all too justified,” sang the American band The Bastard Fairies in their 2010 title track “Man-Made Monster.” The lyrics of the song oscillate between cackling threats of murder and cannibalism, and the lament, “It didn’t have to be this way, I’m a man-made monster led astray.”

The monster is a paradox: simultaneously a true threat, and the object of sympathy. Monsters have been used for millennia to frighten and control—from children’s stories that threaten them with monsters if they don’t listen to their parents, to propaganda that instills a fear of a monstrous Other to encourage citizens to go to war. History and literature are also replete with misunderstood monsters, creatures who are misjudged, and perhaps even become monstrous because of the judgement they experience. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, misunderstood monsters may even have outnumbered sincerely scary ones. And in the second decade of the twenty-first century we’ve all experienced monstrous events on a number of scales, from the personal to the political to the physical and medical. There seems to be no end, and that’s just how we like it.

This global and inclusive conference is an interdisciplinary exploration of the variety of monsters, from gooey spider-legged creatures under the bed, to serial killers safely locked in jail and historical memory. Why do cultures create such abundances of monsters, both in fiction and in our tellings of reality? What are their functions, their roles in society, their cultural impacts? And at the same time, what draws so many people to the monstrous? Are we driven by some primal urge to touch evil, or is there a redemptive impulse in the desire to save a misunderstood creature or person? What about the way monsters are used to justify horrors perpetrated on Others, and how monstrous actions become justified in themselves based on cultural or political beliefs?

This project takes a broad definition of “monsters” and “the monstrous,” including monstrous creatures, people, actions, and events, with a view to forming a series of innovative interdisciplinary dissemination activities including publishing and future international collaborations among other project plans.

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Through his view of humanity as something insignificant in contrast to the cosmos, Lovecraft anticipated significant concerns over the uncertainties proper to the twenty-first century. In the current context of the Anthropocene, we are not threatened by physical hyperobjects or monsters he envisioned, but we struggle to accept that we cannot escape the destructive effects of what we continue to call natural catastrophes. In fact, we continue to believe that we are in control of what happens on Earth. Yet we face two undeniable truths: earthquakes, hurricanes, heat waves, raging fires and sometimes viruses cannot be stopped; and our insistence to claim control over the planet brings permanent destructive marks on its surface, waters and atmosphere. While Lovecraft’s monstrous creatures come from distant pasts and futures, the ultimate monster in our own times is humanity itself.

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