Monsters, crisis, and uncertainty - Overview

A child victim of a kharisiri in Puno.

In Thesis III of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Seven Theses,” the monster represents a category crisis—a moment when familiar systems of classification break down. Monsters exist outside clear boundaries, making them both fascinating and frightening because they resist being neatly defined. Emerging from liminal spaces, monsters force us to confront uncertainty and critically examine the categories we rely on to organize reality. Texts like Ex Machina illustrate this idea by destabilizing assumptions about identity, personhood, self-awareness, and morality. In this class, we will also explore this thesis through Andean examples, including the kharisiri (pishtako), a figure that disrupts categories of human, outsider, and predator, revealing deep anxieties about power, extraction, and belonging.

We will have a guest presentation by Jorge Montesinos, UC Riverside Latin American Studies.

📚Assigned Readings this week:

Burman, Anders. 2018. “Are Anthropologists Monsters? An Andean Dystopian Critique of Extractivist Ethnography and Anglophone-Centric Anthropology.” HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1–2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 48–64. doi:10.1086/698413 📚 Hypothesis annotations week 4

Sámano Córdova, Gerardo. 2023. Monstrilio: A Novel. Zando. Read pp. 34-52

☀️In-class activity: prepare questions for our guest.