Posthuman Gothic

Description

Posthuman Gothic is an edited collection of thirteen chapters, and offers a structured, dialogical contribution to the discussion of the posthuman Gothic. Contributors explore the various ways in which posthuman thought intersects with Gothic textuality and mediality. The texts and media under discussion – from I am Legend to In the Flesh, and from Star Trek to The Truman Show, transgress the boundaries of genre, moving beyond the traditional scope of the Gothic. These texts, the contributors argue, destabilise ideas of the human in a number of ways. By confronting humanity and its Others, they introduce new perspectives on what we traditionally perceive as human. Drawing on key texts of both Gothic and posthumanist theory, the contributors explore such varied themes as posthuman vampire and zombie narratives, genetically modified posthumans, the posthuman in video games, film and TV, the posthuman as a return to nature, the posthuman’s relation to classic monster narratives, and posthuman biohorror and theories of prometheanism and accelerationism. In its entirety, the volume offers a first attempt at addressing the various intersections of the posthuman and the Gothic in contemporary literature and media.

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Post/human/Gothic - Anya Heise-von der Lippe
Part I: Organic
1 Zombie Apocalypse and the Conundrum of Posthumanity in David Wong’s Novels - Michael Sean Bolton
2 Of Crakers and Men: Imagining the Future and Rethinking the Past in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy - Antonia Perikou
3 Of Posthuman Vampires: Science, Blood and Becoming-With - Lars Schmeink
Part II: Undead
4 ‘Lovie – is the vampire so bad?’: Posthuman Rhetoric in Richard Matheson’s I am Legend - Chris Koenig-Woodyard
5 Coexistence and Hospitality: The Gothic Utopian Vision of True Blood - Erica McCrystal
6 Forging Posthuman Identities in Dominic Mitchell’s In The Flesh - Maria Alberto
7 More than Human: Reading the Doppelgänger and Female Monstrosity in Television Vampires - Maria Marino-Faza
Part III: Evolving
8 There’s Something in There: The Posthuman Gothic Mind/Body Divide in Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake - Amalya Ashman and Amy Taylor
9 Still Alive: Understanding Femininity in Valve’s Portal Games - Dawn Stobbart
10 Patchwork Girls: Reflections of Lost Female Identity in Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours - Donna Mitchell
Part IV: Reimagined
11 Being Virtual: The True (Posthu)man Show - Dennis Yeo
12 The Posthuman Monstrous can only be Gothic, or Screening Alien Sex Fiends. - Evan Hayles Gledhill
13 Gothic Inhumanism: Prometheanism, Nanotechnology, Accelerationism - Apasia Stephanou
Bibliography Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Romance
• Gothic

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786831088
• Langue: English

Extrait

POSTHUMAN GOTHIC
SERIES PREFACE
Gothic Literary Studies is dedicated to publishing groundbreaking scholarship on Gothic in literature and film. The Gothic, which has been subjected to a variety of critical and theoretical approaches, is a form which plays an important role in our understanding of literary, intellectual and cultural histories. The series seeks to promote challenging and innovative approaches to Gothic which question any aspect of the Gothic tradition or perceived critical orthodoxy. Volumes in the series explore how issues such as gender, religion, nation and sexuality have shaped our view of the Gothic tradition. Both academically rigorous and informed by the latest developments in critical theory, the series provides an important focus for scholarly developments in Gothic studies, literary studies, cultural studies and critical theory. The series will be of interest to students of all levels and to scholars and teachers of the Gothic and literary and cultural histories.
SERIES EDITORS
Andrew Smith, University of Sheffield
Benjamin F. Fisher, University of Mississippi
EDITORIAL BOARD
Kent Ljungquist, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts
Richard Fusco, St Joseph’s University, Philadelphia
David Punter, University of Bristol
Chris Baldick, University of London
Angela Wright, University of Sheffield
Jerrold E. Hogle, University of Arizona
Posthuman Gothic
Anya Heise-von der Lippe
© The Contributors, 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683-106-4 eISBN 978-1-78683-108-8
The rights of the Contributors to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Cover image: TithiLuadthong / Alamy Stock Photo
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Post/human/Gothic
Anya Heise-von der Lippe
Part I: Organic
1 Zombie Apocalypse and the Conundrum of Posthumanity in David Wong’s Novels
Micheal Sean Bolton
2 Of Crakers and Men: Imagining the Future and Rethinking the Past in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy
Antonia Peroikou
3 Of Posthuman Vampires: Science, Blood and Becoming-With
Lars Schmeink
Part II: Undead
4 ‘Lovie – is the vampire so bad?’: Posthuman Rhetoric in Richard Matheson’s I am Legend
Chris Koenig-Woodyard
5 Coexistence and Hospitality: The Gothic Utopian Vision of True Blood
Erica McCrystal
6 Forging Posthuman Identities in Dominic Mitchell’s In the Flesh
Maria Alberto
7 More than Human: Reading the Doppelgänger and Female Monstrosity in Television Vampires
Maria Marino-Faza
Part III: Evolving
8 There’s Something in There: The Posthuman Gothic Mind/Body Divide in Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake
Amalya Ashman and Amy Taylor
9 Still Alive: Understanding Femininity in Valve’s Portal Games
Dawn Stobbart
10 Patchwork Girls: Reflections of Lost Female Identity in Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours
Donna Mitchell
Part IV: Reimagined
11 Being Virtual: The True (Posthu)man Show
Dennis Yeo
12 The Posthuman Monstrous can only be Gothic, or Screening Alien Sex Fiends
Evan Hayles Gledhill
13 Gothic Inhumanism: Prometheanism, Nanotechnology, Accelerationism
Aspasia Stephanou
Bibliography
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume would never have been possible without the fantastic input from the contributors and I would like to thank all of you for your dedication to this project and for sharing your brilliant thoughts on the posthuman Gothic.
I am very grateful to the series editors, Andrew Smith and Benjamin F. Fisher for giving me the opportunity to publish this volume as part of the Gothic Literary Studies series at the University of Wales Press and I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone at UWP for making this a smooth and easy process for me – most of all the infinitely helpful Sarah Lewis.
There are quite a number of people without whose help and support this tentacled creature would never have hatched in the first place: I am grateful to Russell West-Pavlov for his early encouragement of this publishing project and his support in pursuing it. Daris Jayyusi was of great help with the formatting of the first version and Alexandra Leonzini’s highly astute last-minute proofreading skills helped me submit the manuscript on time. I am immensely grateful to Gina Wisker, Isabella van Elferen and Regina Hansen for their encouragement of my work and their friendship. I am also grateful for the opportunity to test out some of my ideas on the posthuman in the form of conference papers at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts and I would like to thank my ICFA peeps for countless interesting conversations and for their general nerdy awesomeness.
Last but not least I would like to thank H, my own personal cyborg, for putting up with my frequently erratic ravings about the monstrous and the posthuman. I know it’s an acquired taste. Thank you for always being there (and for helping me sort out the bibliography).
The University of Wales Press gratefully acknowledges permissions granted for use of the following materials:
Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2013).
Excerpt from MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 2013 O. W. Toad Ltd. Used by permission of the Author. Published by Doubleday/Random House in the United States; McClelland and Stewart/RHC in Canada; and Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved.
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (London: Virago Press, 2013).
Excerpts from Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 2003 O. W. Toad, Ltd. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 2003 O. W. Toad Ltd. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.
Louise O’Neill, Only Ever Yours (London: Quercus Publishing, 2013).
Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill. Copyright © Louise O’Neill (Quercus, 2015). Reproduced by permission of Louise O’Neill c/o Georgina Capel Associates Ltd, 29 Wardour Street, London, W1D 6PS.
N OTES ON C ONTRIBUTORS
Maria Alberto is an adjunct instructor at Cleveland State University, where she teaches first-year and Honours courses in writing and editing. Her research interests concern cultural memory and canonicity as represented by intersections between literature and sociocultural change. She is especially interested in how audiences receive and repurpose such texts across different media, since these practices represent a fascinating co-evolution of genre and readership.
Amalya Layla Ashman is a postdoctoral fellow at the Kyujanggak Institute, Seoul National University, South Korea. She writes about issues of gender and sexuality, with an emphasis on symbolic forms of socially prohibited relationships, such as incest and bestiality. She also specializes in cultural trauma in contemporary Korean cinema and the application of cultural complexes to post-Jungian theory.
Micheal Sean Bolton received a PhD in American literature in 2009 from Arizona State University. He teaches literature and composition at Santa Fe College in Florida. His field of research is in United States experimental fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His publications include articles in The Flannery O’Connor Review, JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory and Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies .
Evan Hayles Gledhill is a PhD candidate in the English Literature department at the University of Reading, UK. Their thesis explores depictions of embodied identity construction in Gothic fiction, focusing on the interrelations between concepts of monstrosity, normativity and the family. Their research interests more broadly include the construction of masculinity, critical disability perspectives on monstrosity and intertextual audience engagement.
Anya Heise-von der Lippe is an assistant lecturer in English literature and cultural studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her research and teaching focus on monstrosity, non-normative corporeality and posthumanity – especially on the intersections of corporealities and textualities. She has published on hypertext rewritings of Frankenstein , post-apocalyptic dystopias and hauntology in the work of Toni Morrison, Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood and is currently working on several publications on posthuman zombies, Cybergothic and the posthuman Gothic in contemporary popular culture.
Chris Koenig-Woodyard is an award-winning teacher, who lectures on eighteenth- to twentieth-century literature at the University of Toronto, with a focus on fantasy, the Gothic and science fiction. Co-editor of Transatlantic Romanticism: An Anthology of American, British, and Canadian Literature , 1767–1867 (Pearson Longman) and ‘Sullen Fires across the Atlantic’: Essays in British and American Romanticism (Romantic Circles),