ELBOW TALK 4 / S2 – Anik Waldow, From Monstrous Bodies to Monstrous Minds

Welcome to join our fourth and last ELBOW Talk of the Season 2 by Professor Anik Waldow (University of Sydney). Abstract of the talk below. 

 

 

Locke famously asked if it is the lack of reason and language, or rather a particularly hairy complexion or tail that turns ”changelings” into monsters (Essay 3.6.16-22). His provocative question challenged the idea that it is easy to tell which kind of properties humans ought to have in order to qualify as regular representatives of the species. In this talk I argue that the move away from an essentialist conception of the human being towards the end of the seventeenth and early-eighteenth century shifted the focus to thoughts about naturalness to provide a universal measure of normality. However, this development occurred without adequately reflecting how social conventions interfered with ideas about regularity and possible deviations from nature. I identify some of the dangers of this development, by bringing into focus a variety of exclusionary tendencies resulting from universalist conceptions of human nature.