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Textuality within the Western tradition has functioned in Derrida's analysis as the essential, yet disavowed supplement of a logos that perpetually sets itself against the necessary interventions of writing. Derrida compares textuality to a pharmakon, an ambivalent substance that has the capacity to act as both poison and cure. The ‘cure’ that textuality offers to the law pertains to the law's inability to establish its own permanence, or presence, without some literary intervention: only once it is ‘put into writing’ does the law remain ‘on record’, its permanence ‘ensured [by the text] with the vigilance of a guardian’ (Derrida, 2000b, p. 113). At the same time, however, textuality could be said to commit a kind of crime against the logos: it improperly appropriates the ‘presence’ of the law, steals it and substitutes itself for it. Writing is, as Maurice Blanchot puts it, ‘the enemy of all relationships of presence, of all legality’ (Blanchot, 1987, p. 156). The law's ‘presence’ nevertheless depends upon this criminal narrativity. In particular, the emergence of law requires the emergence of a narrative capable of resolving the trauma that attends the inception of communal and individual subjectivity: the law acquires its ‘presence’ only after a certain violent communal fantasy has established a vital untruth about the law's origins. The founding moment of Western law is a representation of a fictive transgression that serves to account for the terrifying, symbolically unrepresentable rupture that separates the individual and the community from the pre-symbolic void. In order for the law to take its place, it is necessary to stage a ‘crime’ and then to re-present it as the law's sure foundation. This crime is parricide and Derrida links it explicitly to the advent of narrativity as the law's uncanny, necessary condition of being:[…] this quasi-event bears the marks of fictive narrativity (fiction of narration as well as fiction as narration: fictive narration as the simulacrum of narration and not only as the narration of an imaginary history). It is the origin of literature as well as the origin of law – like the dead father, a story told, a spreading rumour, without author or end, but an ineluctable and unforgettable story. (Derrida, 1992, p. 199)

Much like the raw painting of Dorian Gray, this investigation will attempt to glimpse beyond the surface façade of the characters portrayed in ShowTime’s Penny Dreadful. Examining the recurring relationship structures within the series, this chapter will dissect ideas of obsession, passion, and justice. What can the relationship dynamics reveal about notions of a monstrous nature? Like the brush strokes of Dorian’s portrait, each layer of analysis will reveal a broader picture of the term monster, being that which is not only applicable to a few individuals, or one particular sex, but a reflection of society. Why are modern day audiences captivated by such character portrayals, and much like the portrait of Dorian Grey, what disturbing truth lurks behind our civilized exterior?

This edited collection proposes an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to the study of reproductive technologies (RTs), which reflects the fact that many people use different technologies throughout their lifecourse and resists the disciplinary siloing of research on these technologies. The ever-expanding availability of RTs, the continued roll-out of ‘family planning’ and maternity services across low- and middle-income settings and the rapid development of the fertility industry mean that it is more likely than ever that individuals, especially women and trans* people, will engage with more than one RT at some point in their life. These multiple engagements with RTs will affect users' expectations and uptake, as well as the technologies' availability, commercial success, ethical status and social meanings. We offer this book as part of a wider movement in the study of reproduction and RTs, which takes inspiration from the reproductive justice framework to address forms of exclusion, discrimination and stratification that are perpetuated in the development and application of RTs and the ways in which they are studied and theorised. Here, we introduce the project and outline the structure of the book.