Abstract
How to govern in the face of radical diversity and seemingly intractable conflict? A key question after 9/11, it is also central to dark fantasy literature.The literary answer is a return to legal rational authority, specifically bureaucracy. We examine the novel, Benighted (Kit Whitfield), where the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity must manage relations between the dominant lycanthropes and the despised underclass of humans. Developing other attempts to theorize the monster in relation to bureaucracy, we suggest that within the novel bureaucrats and the bureau function as ‘‘hopeful monsters,’’ sites for the ongoing negotiation of morality.
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