"Frankenstein" with Kant: A Theory of Monstrosity, or the Monstrosity of Theory

Abstract

The sort of interrogation I am proposing is neither philosophical nor literary but something in between these two. On one hand, it is a testing out of shifting boundary between philosophy, personified by Kant's Critique ofJudgment, and literature, represented by Shelley's Frankenstein; on other, it investigates what rebounds from these two texts: what comes back, or returns. If as Deleuze says, have Critique of Judgment as foundation of Romanticism, perhaps Frankenstein is already encased in and anticipated by Kantian theory.' Correlatively, perhaps these texts, each inverse of other, predict and possibly even determine shape of theory in late twentieth century. If we are heirs of Frankenstein and third Critique-as much read by them as readers of them-what have we inherited, to whom are we indebted, and what are our debts? My thesis is that Victor Frankenstein's Monster is third Critique's heir, and that we are its inheritor. First I argue that, in a philosophic register, Kant's depiction or construction of sublime simultaneously portrays and defends itself against monstrosity; second that, in a literary register, Frankenstein makes explicit and dramatizes what Kant's analytic contains but cannot say, demonstrating that shape of sublime, which fulfills metaphysician's desire, is precisely that of monstrosity; and third, that Shelley's Frankenstein and Kant's Critique ofJudgment together predict form of contemporary theory-the as yet unnameable which is proclaiming itself in terrifying form of monstrosity, as Derrida said when he brought Deconstruction (sometimes described as the French plague) to Baltimore in 1966. Through investigating ways in which these two texts mutually inhabit and enact each other, I suggest that Kant's theory of sublime is not only a form of monstrous but also a figure for theory as such-perhaps even paradigmatic form of it, and that theory in turn is itself monstrous or Frankensteinian. The romantic vision of future