Humans

A Monstrous History
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-0-520-38809-3
Verlag: University of California

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 232 mm, Gewicht: 620 g

A history of how humans have created monsters out of one another—from our deepest fears—and what these monsters tell us about humanity's present and future.

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal.

In an age when corporations increasingly see people as obstacles to profits, this book traces the long, volatile history of monster-making and charts a better path for the future. The result is a profound, effervescent, empowering retelling of the history of the world for anyone who wants to reverse rising inequality and polarization. This is not a history of monsters, but a history through monsters.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Davies, Surekha

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie des Brauchtums und der Traditionen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Volkskunde: Sitten, Traditionen, Mythen, Legenden
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Introduction
1 • On the Ecology of Monsters

2 • Human or Animal?
3 • Race-Nations
4 • Race-Nations II

5 • Gender, Sex, and Monstrous Births

6 • Monstrous Performance and Display
7 • Gods, Magic, and the Supernatural
8 • Machines
9 • Extraterrestrials
10 • Monstrofuturism

Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dr. Surekha Davies is a British author, speaker, and historian of science, art, and ideas. Her first book, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human, won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best first book in intellectual history from the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Roland H. Bainton Prize in History and Theology. She has written essays and reviews about the histories of biology, anthropology, and monsters in the Times Literary Supplement, Nature, Science, and Aeon.