Degradation In The Grotesque

According to Bakhtin, degradation which is a basic operation of the grotesque is associated with corporeality. It centres on “the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract; it is a transfer to the material level, to the sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity” (19-20). Degradation of what is high subsumes the debasement of the human body. Yet, he indicates that degradation is based on an ambivalent act; it is both destructive and regenerative as it describes a backward movement, a retraction from the “upward” to the “downward” (21). It is a “coming down to earth, the contact with the earth as an element that swallows up [the grave, the womb] and gives birth at the same time. To degrade is to bury, to sow, and to kill simultaneously, in order to bring forth something more and better” (21).

The gendering of the grotesque as female is an integral part of the phallogocentric discourse which naturalizes the bond between the female and the grotesque in order to subjugate women to surveillance and discipline. According to Peter Stallybrass in his essay “Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed,” the patriarchal society has long been conceived of female body as “naturally grotesque” to better exercise “constant surveillance” upon (126). This categorization that basically serves the patriarchal system of binarism dependent on the polar, dichotomous opposites of male/female, angel/monster and self/other consolidates the otherization and monsterization of the female body vis-à-vis the male body. Indeed, the classificatory system of the dominant discourse strives to identify woman as either outside or inside the boundaries of