ABSTRACT
Despite his disfigured flesh, the Monster is like us and we are like him. This unexpected and generally unwelcomed kinship compels us to look again at the issue of what constitutes personhood. Amplifying this theme, this question explores two lines of the Monster’s descendants, which show the different criteria we adopt in judging what is like and what is unlike us. On one line, the powers of genetic manipulation and computer technologies are engineering enhanced human bodies whose flesh re-fashioned in multiple ways is transforming the dream of a life without death by framing it in terms of remaining forever young. Consumers in shopping malls and in tourist sites are two examples of a disguised progeny of the Monster with whom we are pleasantly and comfortably distracted from the fear of death. On the other line, the progeny of the Monster haunt us today as dispensable, throw-away people who, lingering on the margins of our technologically fashioned version of paradise, remain invisible. The bag lady on the street, the disabled person asking for some change and many other variants are monstrous figures we often avoid as being not like us at all.
