{"id":295,"date":"2019-02-07T21:19:36","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T02:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/?p=295"},"modified":"2019-02-07T21:20:22","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T02:20:22","slug":"tillichs-symbol-and-baldwins-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/2019\/02\/07\/tillichs-symbol-and-baldwins-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Tillich’s Symbol and Baldwin’s Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cohen defines the monster as a representation of culture and uses medieval, Biblical, and Greek myths to fuel his \u201cmonster theory.\u201d The ideas in \u201cMonster Culture (Seven Theses)\u201d are reminiscent of Paul Tillich\u2019s essay \u201cThe Religious Symbol,\u201d<\/a> in which Tillich defines \u201csymbolics\u201d as \u201ca general science of the self-expression of all groups, tendencies, and communities\u201d (4). Cohen\u2019s chapter feels like a branch from Tillich\u2019s essay in that the monster is a specific form of the symbol used to embody abjection to \u201cthe other.\u201d Cohen emphasizes sexuality, disability, and race as specific areas of anxiety to our culture. Tillich goes onto say that symbols may change unconsciously as cultures change, and thus create myths, which are used to explain one culture\u2019s interpretation of existence (Tillich 9). Cohen references multiple myths in this chapter to show how many monsters appear throughout the history of storytelling. While Cohen includes that monsters represent a \u201ccertain cultural moment,\u201d I wonder what he would think about a monster\u2019s implication of that culture\u2019s existence?<\/p>\n

Part of the anxiety of monsters is a fear of the foreign or racial fears. On page 11, Cohen writes, \u201cThe political-cultural monster, the embodiment of radical difference, paradoxically threatens to erase difference in the world of its creators\u2026 Difference that exists outside the system is terrifying because it reveals the truth of the system, its relativity, its fragility, and its mortality\u2026\u201d This language reminded me of James Baldwin\u2019s \u201cA Letter to My Nephew,\u201d<\/a> in which Baldwin is explaining blackness in America to his nephew, but it was published in his book The Fire Next Time <\/em>and meant to be read by both black and white. He writes, \u201c\u2026The danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations\u201d (par. 9). This quote echoes Cohen\u2019s statement that monsters threaten to destroy the world of its creators, who \u201chave been mainly European [and American] and male\u201d (Cohen 15). Cohen also mentions a fear of darker skin, and Baldwin\u2019s language easily depicts the black man as a monster destroying the white man\u2019s world, and even defying laws of nature or disrupting the order of things.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Baldwin, James. “A Letter to My Nephew.”<\/a> The Progressive<\/em>. Dec. 1, 1962. Web.<\/p>\n

Tillich, Paul. \u201cThe Religious Symbol.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Daedalus<\/em>, vol. 87, no. 3, 1958, pp. 3\u201321.\u00a0JSTOR<\/em>. Web.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cohen defines the monster as a representation of culture and uses medieval, Biblical, and Greek myths to fuel his \u201cmonster theory.\u201d The ideas in \u201cMonster Culture (Seven Theses)\u201d are reminiscent of Paul Tillich\u2019s essay \u201cThe Religious Symbol,\u201d in which Tillich defines \u201csymbolics\u201d as \u201ca general science of the self-expression of all groups, tendencies, and communities\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":220,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-a"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paB9Ga-4L","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}