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X-Men is a movie franchise spanning 11 films centered on monsters and mutants (Braidotti, 1996), that is, the superheroes that appeared in the Marvel comics (Lauren Shuler Donner, 2000–2017). The franchise includes a rich compendium of male and female characters. Characters from both gender categories are gifted with powers and enjoy a remarkable focus from the plot. However, there are fewer female characters than male, and the former's powers are mainly related to the mind, rather than physical strength. If it is possible to immediately criticise the above-mentioned male focus, or the unequal distribution of powers, at the same time it is impossible to deny that both gender categories – male and female – reintroduce the gender binary that structures everyday reality in our current society (Butler, 2015). Such binary is a structural part of the cisgender and heteronormative system, inside which human beings carry out their existence. For these reasons, X-Men was interpreted by many transgender movements as a possible monstrous reclamation because it confers visibility to those bodies which are outside the norm (Preciado, 2020b) and it includes them in the context of a possible recognition as part of the cultural imaginary. This analysis, therefore, glimpses a possible liberation from the epistemological and material violence of the cisgender norm. This chapter will focus on the way in which the X-Men saga isn't faithful to a revolutionarily monstrous possibility, but rather carries out, through an apparatus of capture (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009), the reenactment of cis- and heteronormativity. In fact, those mutant and monstrous bodies represented here can be part of a highly popular franchise because they are part of the cisgender and heterosexual norm (Wittig, 1992) and because they put their monstrosity not outside the devices of power (Foucault, 2015), but at their service.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Marxist accounts of capitalism and capitalists as “vampiric” and “cannibalistic” can challenge the exploitation underlying “monstrosity” of the diverse “liberal organization”.

To bear out this argument, it will critically turn to Marx's original description of capitalism as “vampire” like. It will do so by examining a range of theoretical and existing empirical research related themes of contemporary diversity.

The paper argues that in order to avoid becoming capitalist monsters it is imperative to adopt an explicitly anti-capitalist Marxist perspective centring on themes of a “monstrous” capitalism. Capitalist organizations, not only “suck the blood of workers” but turns them into exploiting vampires, feeding on others for own profit and promotion. Yet it also expands on such readings by emphasizing the liberating possibilities that a more contemporary view of “monsters” stressing radical diversity and difference can make to this Marxist critique.

To this end, it illuminates how a perspective uniting these ideals, termed here as a “revolutionary monstrous humanism”, can effectively challenge the dehumanization of managerial control and market ideologies while also fighting for the right of individuals to express their heterogeneous and always evolving unique cultural identities.

Monsters, from ghouls and zombies to shoggoths and Cthulhu, have always fascinated humans and have a prominent presence in cultural production. This is made clear by how much people enjoy Halloween events and dressing up as their favourite monster or the most recent trend of horror themed escape rooms, that include haunted houses, a zombie apocalypse or Lovecraftian monsters. Monstrous creatures represent the fears and desires of society and often embody the allure of danger, transgression and power. Monsters have long been used to construct certain images of the different/unconventional and thus represent anything diverse as the Other. Monsters, however, can be employed to invert or even overturn this relationship by empowering the Other and thus provide us with a more critical view on society in regard to our values, fears and attitudes. The stories and folklore about monsters and the monstrous that incite fear and remind us to always check under our beds before we sleep have also found their way into our everyday lives. Within the mainstream media, criminality is indicative of moral corruption, and is attributed with notions of monstrosity. These monsters do not have claws, instead, they are unpredictable, different and deviate from social and cultural norms. Like the mythical creatures in folklore, monstrosity in its human form reminds us to fear the future, the unknown, Others and society. The monstrous is centrally defined by its unfixedness, its resistance to conformity or to convenient schematic identification. It is somatically and intellectually uneasy, a restless disturbing embodied thought that unsettles, and whose greatest value to us is its very indeterminacy. This chapter illustrates the shifting shapes of the monstrous, their makers, and offers insight about what we can learn from studying these cautionary noetic chimeras. Drawing on the diversity of our academic backgrounds, ideological perspectives and the research from our individual chapters, we address the contemporary narrative of the figure of the monster. Rather than an essay style examination, our chapter explores this narrative through a question and answer format. The flexibility of this format allows readers an intimate glimpse into the ways in which the monstrous can be conceptualised and understood in various frameworks.

The purpose of this paper is to problematise the notion of woman-as-monster and draws together a conceptual analysis of the monstrous-feminine and its relation to maternal and monstrous bodies including its implications for equality and inclusion in the workplace.

Whilst exploring how female monsters are inextricably tied to their sexual difference, the author draws on social and psychoanalytic perspectives to suggest how such monstrosity is expressed through ambivalence to the maternal. The author analyses two “faces” of the monstrous-feminine in particular: the archaic mother and the monstrous womb (Creed, 1993) and develop this discussion in relation to the potential for a feminist monstrous politics of organisation.

First, the author exposes the basis on which the monstrous-feminine articulates and disarticulates femininity, that is to say, how a feminist analysis of monsters may enable but also foreclose a positive articulation of disruption, disorder and disorganisation central to the conceptualisation of monsters. This is done through a reading of the maternal-feminine and literature on motherhood in organisation studies. Second, the author locates the monstrous-feminine in the body and explores how maternal bodies are constructed and experienced as monstrous as they disrupt the self/other relationship. This analysis suggests that embodying the monster comes with risks and that different configurations of the monstrous maternal are necessary for equality and inclusion in the workplace.

The paper identifies and contributes to growing research on the ambivalence of monsters and expands a neglected area of the feminine and maternal aspects of these relationships and what this means for workplace relations.

In this chapter, I discuss the development of the cannibal picking up from Jennifer Brown’s (2013) study, Cannibalism in Literature and Film. Brown (2013, p. 7) argued that the cannibal is a sign of ultimate difference who ‘reappears in various guises at times when popular culture needs to express real fears and anxieties’. I argue that the most recent version of the cannibal is gendered female and that this coincides with a postfeminist media culture. I explore how the cannibal is positioned as an ambiguous figure which questions both humanity and monstrosity. I argue that this is complicated by gendering it female as women have traditionally straddled the line between human and less-than human in popular culture. I discuss three films: 301/302 (Park, 1995), The Woman (Torino, Van Den Houten, & McKee, 2011) and Raw (De Forêts & Ducournau, 2016) and explore how they use incest, objectification and dehumanization as well as cannibalism to explore the ambiguities of postfeminist subjecthood. I will argue that by performing acts of cannibalism the female cannibals in these films reclaim their subjectivity both by objectifying others and by identifying with their victims. The cannibalism also presents the opportunity for female-oriented families through shared consumption which ironically embraces patriarchal ideals of feminine feeding roles and challenges the patriarchal basis of the family.

The first season of HBO's Lovecraft Country is based on Matt Ruff's 2016 novel and explores the horrifying world of H.P. Lovecraft and the very real Jim Crow-era racism that plagued the United States in the 1950s. The series, developed by Misha Green and produced by Jordan Peele, places Black protagonists at the centre of a Lovecraftian horror story. The Black characters have to face shoggoths, grand wizards and magic but they also have to deal with and escape very realistic horror, in the form of racist police violence and white supremacy. By bringing the Black characters into the centre – often the metaphorical villains of Lovecraft's stories – the series allows for a new layer of meaning to Lovecraft's fear of the other. Atticus, Leticia, Uncle George, Hippolyta and the rest of the cast are struggling to escape the everyday real and supernatural manifestations of racism. Their struggle can be seen as a reflection of the actual struggle of the Black communities today, who are trying to liberate themselves from the shackles of oppression and systemic racism once and for all, so all people regardless of the colour of their skin, gender, race and ethnicity can finally be free. Lovecraft Country can be read as a symbolic yet crucial contemporary representation of this struggle for freedom. The series was created before George Floyd's and Breonna Taylor's murders, but it came after the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile and Sandra Bland. Once the viewers search deeper and look past the dark mansions, the wicked wizards and the shoggoth monsters, they can understand that the supernatural and fictional land of Lovecraft Country is not a distant place after all.

Since 2004, Turkish cinema has been witnessing an emergence of horror genre, now flooded with stories of possession by malevolent jinn, as transgressive, volatile figures of abjection. These female-centred narratives rely both on Islamic cosmology and myths and folktales of pre-Islamic Anatolian oral culture. The chapter will first explore the reasons horror has been neglected in the century-long history of cinema in Turkey and move on to highlight the socio-economic, cultural, and political contexts that were catalysts for the horror genre’s emergence. Then, the chapter will discuss the codes and conventions of the genre and explore the unique place of Alper Mestçi’s 2007 film Haunted (Musallat), among its contemporaries in terms of the ways in which the film challenges these established codes and conventions. In analysing Haunted, the chapter will use the theoretical framework of Barbara Creed, Carol J. Clover and Julia Kristeva to discuss the monstrous-feminine and masculinity as abjection.

This chapter explores the theoretical foundations of Hazeen, a Muslim blackened death metal band formed in 2015 by the authors - Safdar Ahmed on guitar and vocals, and Can Yalcinkaya on the drums and darbuka. It provides insights into the musical and performative practices of our band that are informed by traditions of black and death metal, but which also re-interpret them through an engagement with anti-fascist, anti-Islamophobic politics as well as Sufi/batini elements. Hazeen responds to a rising tide of Islamophobia in Australia, using our lyrics and performances to attack racist stereotyping and the dehumanisation of Muslims. In our performances, we dress in black, Islamic attire and apply ‘corpse paint’ to become the much feared ‘other’ of the post-9/11 world - the monstrous, rabid, zombie-like Muslim that has haunted the right wing/conservative imagination in the West. Our lyrics address such issues as the inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia, halal food conspiracies, orientalism and the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’. This chapter presents a critical exegesis of Hazeen’s output in the form of live gigs, art performances and studio recordings. It seeks to identify Hazeen’s place within the broader Australian metal scene, posing questions of authenticity and how metal enables us to question hegemonic notions of identity. Hazeen’s use of art spaces as venues of performance and involvement in the indie/zine community highlights an unconventional position within the local metal scene.