Gothic Literature: Oppression, Revolt, and the Uncanny

Gothic literature, emerging at the end of the eighteenth century during the age of revolutions, is a literature concerned fundamentally with power. Born from violent repression, the gothic genre depicts a society in decay, full of guilt, secrets, and darkness—a place where only the forces of recognition and change can be seen. From the eighteenth century to today, the horrors and hauntings of gothic literature have provided writers around the world with ways to explore both the collective and the intimate destructions wrought by oppressive societies and violent histories. But what exactly makes the gothic form so suitable to expressing the historic traumas that conventional narratives render or treat as inexpressible? What does the persistence of the gothic, into the present, tell us about the history and trajectory of the violent dynamics that motivated the genre in the first place? And how, through the gothic, can we understand the relationship between art, genre, and social critique?

In this course, we will explore the oppressive social and psychic world that gave rise to the gothic, and ask how—or if—language and literature can be adequate tools to redress past violence. We will consider the “haunted house” of the American nation, plagued by native dispossession and slavery; explore the the implicit queerness of the gothic (and in particular the lesbian intimacies of the vampire); and read through the “tropical gothic” of postcolonial nations struggling for genuine independence across the Global South, from the Philippines to the Caribbean. Readings include works by: Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, Edgar Allan Poe, Sigmund Freud, Hélène Cixous, Sheridan La Fanu, Nick Joaquin, and Maryse Condé.

“Gothic Literature: Oppression, Revolt, and the Uncanny” will also take place in-person, at BISR Central, starting Thursday, January 29th.