Monster bodies, monster spaces

I track down monsters as a stimulating (monere) and pointing (monstrum) subject which is created through our social fears, curiosities and suspended thoughts, that have somehow taken place in our minds since the moment we know ourselves. The fact that monster which is in a process of constantly changing and dreamed on, makes it ideologically impossible to be used by anyone's "pragmatic" purposes. It cannot be a part of the taxonomy or any other classification systems because of its unclassified ontological being, although "the power" is eager to place them into somewhere. With this way, monster, so to speak, is constructing both itself and the environment simultaneously and embodied with the city without being noticed by anyone. I'm building my vision of monstrous body on the idea of Deleuze who is constructing his idea on the Spinoza's philosophy of becoming which continuously changes the states of bodies from one to another. As "man" is taken as the basis of universal reason and rational thought, Deleuzian thought is based on that all becomings are actually becoming-woman. Becoming-woman is also becoming-minority which disrupts and deterritorializes dualities, boundaries and fixed bodies – objects. Thus, I read monster-becoming, which deterritorializes social norms due to constructing body and space continuously in a city which cannot be classified under the taxonomical categories, in parallel with feminist and queer theory that is also based on the Deleuzian philosophy. I wonder what monster imagination can tell us through some examples that have taken place in oral history, mythology, literature and cinema through centuries. Monster is written, embodied and facilitated as a stimulating and pointing subject to engage in dialogue and struggle by the things that the society does not know or, ignores to know, tries to erase from the collective memory or the things that the society are forced to forget; in short, a series of events that creates a traumatic effect in the society. Monsters merging from traumatic occasions are seen in "written" texts which can also considered in visual, literary, auditory or behavioral dimensions. I try to explore the tactics that will exploit the gaps of the founding strategies of the existing "power" and reveal the monsters. Analysing/ deconstructing the text of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus" gives the possibility of construing the production process of the monster starting from collecting body parts of the creator until the embodiment of the monster through its experiences in the society and the feelings that emerges from the events it involves. Also, since we know the era which Mary Shelley writes the story and also lives, we can relate the narrative with Shelley's background and trace the marks of the events of that time that constitute the narrative of the monster. The tactics of "quoting", "embodying", "differentiating" and "blurring boundaries" which are discovered from the text itself and the other monstrous-becoming samples, correlate an analogical relationship between the format of the text and construction of the body in a monster-writing in literature: In the text, while Shelley uses spaces, objects and emotions together through several letters and diaries, she creates new timelines in the entire text in a superposed manner, Frankenstein constructs his monster by bringing several body parts together (quoting); while Shelley describes the monster character in the text and constructs it with details, the monster also builds itself by learning to use the language, tools and reading the creator's diary about his own creation process (embodying); while Shelley uses the definition sentences in the text since the monster wants to define itself, the definitions which Shelley directs towards it constantly changes since it differs its character and the way it behaves according to occurrences (differentiating) and while Shelley uses the negatives of the things like saying "what it is not" instead of "what it is", the monster which cannot include itself in any category, tries to understand not "what it really is" but "what it is not", after it has disgraced and feared by the society (blurring boundaries). So, whole these information related with the creation process of the monster both as a story narrative and Shelley's real life background allow me to deconstruct the text with the help of the tactics, the concepts of narratology, and some other textual examples from the visual, literary, auditory, or behavioral mediums. The city itself; escaping from the order of things; since it is a text that needs to be fragmented and then re-assembled within multiple possibilities, I'm looking for monster bodies and monster spaces –monstrous Tahtakale- in the city where the monster body is constantly rewritten. I think that monster which thwarts the human body (due to interfering both with the objects and the environment) and the concept of time (due to multiplying itself by writing the past onto the present) can only be written by intersubjective and intertemporal manner. In the city, the thin line between public and private becomes quite thick with its feature that causes to overflow of the hidden "inside" (private) to the exposed to the "outside" (public). Although it seems like "openness" or "open mindness", it becomes more like an unexpected exposure with turning everything inside out and unleashes severity in, between, on and under the streets of Tahtakale that are forced them to enclose in a new "inside" by dictating gender codes to the bodies. Exploring what the monsters of the city might be with a "monster–writing" attempt reveals the political-cultural monster that embraces all these fears, curiosities and evaded in its own existence and tries to liberate. If the monster embodies the fear according to approaching/ gazing into the space with a number of tactics from different positions, the question of "how much of the embodiment is attributed to the body or the space" reveals which also exceeds the limits of the monster body. As a result of all this ambiguity, now I am not sure about borders: what starts where and what ends where; where the lines of boundaries are drawn. If there is a limit, the width of this border exceeds my field of view. In order to confront the opposed violence between the materialism of the body and the materialism of the space and to confront the violence with the reader; I situate myself in feminist critical spatial practices, which propose different ways of "making" with disrupting the conventional design practices dominated by "the power". I also explore monsters by collage-texts through "minority-becoming"/ "woman-becoming" while walking through the city as a woman through the tactics I've taken from monster samples. Thus, this work can be articulated into feminist critical spatial practices looking for new ways of thinking and producing on architecture and urban space by trying to face the roles assigned to the bodies. Instead of discussing space with dualities, boundaries, and fixed bodies - objects, it opens the way of discussing multiple body-space relations within multiple nomadic identities through monster-becoming. Who knows, perhaps it may also be an opportunity to question our own monstrosity and the monstrosity of the places we live in. Thus, this work can be integrated into the seekers of new ways of thinking and producing on architecture and urban space, and it can be a tool to discuss monster-becoming, body and space in an intertwined manner, beyond discussing space over dualities, boundaries, and fixed bodies - objects.