Le metamorfosi del mostruoso eccentrico. Una promessa per tempi inquieti

The eccentric monster, evoking Plessner’s well-known category, is a being the main characteristic of which is metamorphosis, the capacity of changing form and predicting the reversal of established values. The aim of this paper is to indicate how monsters have changed and how our perception of what we consider monstrous has evolved. From the freak of nature with physical malformations to the scandal of the no resemblance to the father through the obscene power of the mother’s imagination, with the beginning of scientific studies, the monster becomes artificial, a human production in rebellion against the work of God the Father. In his revolutionary power, the monster puts us in front of a new truth: after all we are not so different from him and the only way to survive on our devastated Earth is hybridization, where the capacity of a multispecies collaboration is no longer an anomaly but the rule. This is the monster promise we must keep.