An urgent volume of essays engages the Gothic to advance important perspectives on our geological era
What can the Gothic teach us about our current geological era? More than just spooky, moonlit castles and morbid graveyards, the Gothic represents a vibrant, emergent perspective on the Anthropocene. In this volume, more than a dozen scholars move beyond longstanding perspectives on the Anthropocene-such as science fiction and apocalyptic narratives-to show that the Gothic offers a unique (and dark) interpretation of events like climate change, diminished ecosystems, and mass extinction.
Embracing pop cultural phenomena like True Detective, Jaws, and Twin Peaks, as well as topics from the New Weird and prehistoric shark fiction to ruin porn and the ""monstroscene,"" Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth demonstrates the continuing vitality of the Gothic while opening important new paths of inquiry. These essays map a genealogy of the Gothic while providing fresh perspectives on the ongoing climate chaos, the North/South divide, issues of racialization, dark ecology, questions surrounding environmental justice, and much more.
Contributors: Fred Botting, Kingston U; Timothy Clark, U of Durham; Rebecca Duncan, Linnaeus U; Michael Fuchs, U of Oldenburg, Germany; Esthie Hugo, U of Warwick; Dawn Keetley, Lehigh U; Laura R. Kremmel, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology; Timothy Morton, Rice U; Barry Murnane, U of Oxford; Jennifer Schell, U of Alaska Fairbanks; Lisa M. Vetere, Monmouth U; Sara Wasson, Lancaster U; Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan U.
Edited by:
Justin D. Edwards,
Rune Graulund,
Johan Höglund
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 140mm,
Spine: 51mm
ISBN: 9781517911232
ISBN 10: 1517911230
Pages: 392
Publication Date: 28 June 2022
Audience:
General/trade
,
Professional and scholarly
,
ELT Advanced
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Gothic in the Anthropocene Part I. Anthropocene 1. The Anthropocene Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 2. De-extinction: A Gothic Masternarrative for the Anthropocene Michael Fuchs 3. Lovecraft vs. VanderMeer: Posthuman Horror (and Hope?) in the Zone of Exception Rune Graulund 4. Monstrous Megalodons of the Anthropocene: Extinction and Adaptation in Prehistoric Shark Fiction, 1974–2018 Jennifer Schell 5. A Violence “Just below the Skin”: Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies from the African Anthropocene Esthie Hugo Part II. Plantationocene 6. Horrors of the Horticultural: Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland and the Landscapes of the Anthropocene Lisa M. Vetere 7. True Detective’s Folk Gothic Dawn Keetley 8. Beyond the Slaughterhouse: Anthropocene, Animals, and Gothic Justin D. Edwards Part III. Capitalocene 9. Gothic in the Capitalocene: World-Ecological Crisis, Decolonial Horror, and the South African Postcolony Rebecca Duncan 10. Overpopulation: The Human as Inhuman Timothy Clark 11. Digging Up Dirt: Reading the Anthropocene through German Romanticism Barry Murnane 12. Got a Light? The Dark Currents of Energy in Twin Peaks: The Return Timothy Morton and Rune Graulund Part IV. Chthulucene 13. The Anthropocene Within: Love and Extinction in M. R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts and The Boy on the Bridge Johan Höglund 14. Rot and Recycle: Gothic Eco-burial Laura R. Kremmel 15. Erotics and Annihilation: Caitlín R. Kiernan, Queering the Weird, and Challenges to the “Anthropocene” Sara Wasson 16. Monstrocene Fred Botting Contributors Index
Justin D. Edwards is professor of English and chair in Gothic studies at the University of Stirling. He is author of, most recently, Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture: The Americas and coeditor of B-Movie Gothic: International Perspectives. Rune Graulund is associate professor in American literature and culture at the Center for American Studies and director of the research cluster Anthropocene Aesthetics at the University of Southern Denmark. He is coauthor of Grotesque and Mobility at Large: Globalization, Textuality, and Innovative Travel Writing. Johan Hglund is professor of English at Linnaeus University. He is coeditor of B-Movie Gothic: International Perspectives and Nordic Gothic.
Reviews for Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth: The Gothic Anthropocene
All of the essays connect the subjective potency of the texts under discussion - the affects and moods that they inspire in the reader or viewer - to the ways that such works also give us a deeper understanding of the ongoing ecological transactions that are putting our very existence at risk. Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth both reclaims the gothic as an urgently relevant mode of fiction-making and suggests that aesthetic approaches are able to bring us a kind of understanding that scientific studies on their own could not. -Los Angeles Review of Books
