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The Metanarrative Problem of Monsters … in Theory

2025· book-chapter· en· W4411604320 on OpenAlexaff
Douglas E. Cowan

Bibliographic record

VenueOxford University Press eBooks · 2025
Typebook-chapter
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicNarrative Theory and Analysis
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Waterloo
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMetanarrativePhilosophyLinguisticsNarrative

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract This chapter introduces the reader to the problem of metanarrative explanations in the emerging field of monster theory, as well as some of the debates they engender, the challenges they encounter, and some proposed solutions. While it adverts at times to biblical monsters, the principal focus here is on some of the intellectual problems inherent in theorizing monsters and monstrosity in more general terms, though in the context of a religious studies approach. This chapter introduces the reader to such concepts as: metanarrative explanations for monstrosity; the difference between a riddle and an enigma in terms of explaining monsters; religio as an analytically useful way of understanding religion; the importance of context in approaching and engaging the presence of the monstrous.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Other · Consensus signal: Other
Teacher disagreement score0.885
Threshold uncertainty score0.736

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.020
GPT teacher head0.198
Teacher spread0.178 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreOther

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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