Człowiek-wilk, czyli (niknący) pośrednik

Abstract

Werewolf, unlike other modern monsters (like vampire or living dead) is constituted by their ability to revertible transformation – they lose their humanity for a period of time in favour of monstrous human-wolf form, and yet, they can revert to the human form. The essence of being a werewolf would be hidden in the hyphen in the ’human-wolf ’ expression. It’s about being a (vanishing) mediator between those concepts, which in modern culture are recognised as opposite to each other. In this sense, werewolf appears to be one of the most extraordinary monsters of our culture, mainly exactly because of the, similar to all monstrous characters, yet particularly visible here, vanishing of the boundaries (mainly those vitally constitutive, between nature and culture, humans and non-humans, self and the other), being in addition an expression of disapproval of taking a part in the western classification of matters.