An a/i horror experiment
Misreading -- Gothic hauntology: Everyday Hauntings and Epistemological Desire (2023)
Gothic hauntology: Everyday Hauntings and Epistemological Desire. Springer Nature.
I normally use Google Gemini for outlining and otherwise goofing off.
One of my peeves is the misuse of Gothic as academic misunderstanding (and as deliberate obscurantism) for the correct term: horror. This was brought home to me again yesterday when reading Gothic hauntology: Everyday Hauntings and Epistemological Desire.
So I asked Gemini to extract sentences that used the term gothic, and replace that term with the word HORROR.
The results are not without interest:
Chapter 1
Hauntology could be said to constitute the bedrock foundation of the whole category of HORROR, even though 'bedrock' is perhaps a bad word choice when speaking of ghosts and such an ephemeral concept.
'HORROR hauntology' actually sounds like a tautology.
Speaking with literary history in mind, HORROR was from the beginning constructed out of a specific literary representation of an, at least partly, imagined or re-imagined historical era.
However, generally speaking, a too vastly "expanded [...] remit" of the concept may become next to useless for readers and scholars alike. If it applies to the majority, or perhaps even all, HORROR narratives, how can it possess any analytic and conceptual value?
However, it has been argued that the HORROR genre was very broad already from the outset.
In Contesting HORROR, James Watt argues that the whole idea of HORROR as a generically structured category is by and large a modern construction.
Though the genre of gothic romance clearly owes its name to the subtitle of The Castle of Otranto's second edition, 'A Gothic Story', the elevation of Walpole's work to the status of an origin has served to grant an illusory stability to a body of fiction which is distinctly heterogeneous.
As I will argue, however, any categorization of HORROR as a continuous tradition, with a generic significance, is unable to do justice to the diversity of the romances which are now accommodated under the 'HORROR' label, and liable to overlook the often antagonistic relations that existed between different works or writers.
The heterogeneity that unfolds in the works pursued in this study is then constituting more of a return to an 'original' heterogeneity rather than showcasing an increasing deviance from an original prototype.
In investigating various aspects of the hauntological, however, it will inevitably mean that some HORROR tropes are more involved than others.
The purpose of the investigations below is mainly to outline how the diversity of hauntological phenomena may appear in works that are more or less falling within the category of HORROR fiction.
Sometimes the analyses may perhaps say more about hauntology than about the works themselves, but that is also part of the intention with the overall setup of the investigation.
HORROR has always filled the function of reminding us of our vulnerability and to beware of rational and scientific hubris.
Chapter 2
Alice Munro is firmly anchored in the tradition that has come to be labelled Canadian HORROR or Southern Ontario HORROR.
If one zooms in even more closely, it could be said that the Canadian HORROR is one of survival, not only in the wilderness of Canadian landscapes, but also quite plainly in the experiential concentration of the domestic sphere.
This mode may just as well be called 'everyday HORROR', since the manner of its appearance is more on the level of the uncanny or of a certain affective mood that may be difficult to pin down.
Focusing more strictly on the HORROR genre, we may state that quite often the unknowing has an even vaster superstructure, that is, an ignorance that will never really be converted into knowing.
To be sure, this feature indicates the ultimate HORROR rebellion against any overly rational outlook on the world, which for instance could be derived from Enlightenment ideals or the epistemological convictions and truisms founding the natural sciences.
Some modern HORROR variations of this topic are clad in more everyday and perhaps psychologically realistic robes, as we will see for instance in Atwood's and Munro's fiction.
The phenomenon of guilt is a common constituent of the HORROR genre.
For instance, a large number of Poe's short stories may be situated somewhere within the boundary areas between horror, crime and HORROR.
Obviously, this type could refer to either a very specific one, in terms of the loss of a person, or of a more general version that verges on existential, religious or mythical dimensions. Even more variation is possible, since these two types of concrete and more abstract levels may actually operate in parallel. To illustrate what this may look like, we can turn to the phenomenon of the missing person that definitely traverses the genres of crime fiction, horror fiction and HORROR.
In Atwood, HORROR’s impact consists of a continuous haunting and taunting of the pervasive illusion that we fully control our lives.
In this chapter we look at details in everyday HORROR that indicate the dynamics of hauntology.
Chapter 3
In Chap. 3, the study moves into more established and well-known HORROR areas, namely foremost that of the vampire.
Significantly, the vampire is the haunted and the haunting. This paradoxical configuration makes it a special and highly attractive HORROR figure.
It seems to exist solely to transgress boundaries, since it in itself contains a transgression and disturbance of the dichotomy man-animal.
The strength of HORROR comes to the fore here, since it treats hauntology as frightening, but in the midst of that fear and HORROR, it also possibly functions as a cathartic force.
Chapter 4
Chapter 4 moves into the early developments of HORROR in a selection of works by Edgar Allan Poe, and thereby it deals with some traditional hauntological traits as for instance guilt and trauma.
Lovecraft's fiction contains a grotesquely hyperbolic version of phenomenological horizons, which I claim is the true HORROR of Lovecraft.
Through close readings of Lovecraft's HORROR tales "The Lurking Fear", "The Music of Erich Zann" and "The Haunter in the Dark", the chapter highlights the fundamental phenomena that build up Lovecraft's hauntological prose as a death-infused sermon, delivered by a religious atheist.
At a quick glance, the quotidian or 'realistic' setting of these short stories may easily be degraded to the level of the prop, that is, it merely functions as a contrast to the fantastical.
However, it is actually in these parts of the narratives that the hauntology is manifested in its most intriguing and perhaps horrifying way.
Chapter 6
It's clear why reading Lovecraft is paradoxically comforting to those souls who are weary of life. In fact, it should perhaps be prescribed to all who, for one reason or other, have come to feel true aversion to life in all its forms. In some cases, the jolt to the nerves upon a first reading is immense. One may find oneself smiling all alone, or humming a tune from a musical. One's outlook on existence is, in a word, modified. —(Michel Houellebecq, H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, 34)
The American author of HORROR must be regarded as a key figure when we further pursue the topic of hauntology.
Many of Poe's short stories incarnate the idea of haunting guilt, at least that may be concluded after a rather superficial first reading. Just to name a few of these narratives, we have classics such as "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Imp of the Perverse" and "The Black Cat", in all of which a near-metaphysical force takes over the protagonists' whole being and compels them to reveal the truth, even if that truth is concomitantly their own undoing and their way to perdition, either to rot in prison or to hang from the gallows.
Lovecraft's HORROR is externalized and, as I will argue, on its most horrifying level it should be seen as an epistemological hauntology.
The tales selected for analysis here are from the collection Gothic Tales of H. P. Lovecraft.
In this early build-up, we clearly observe how Fisher's definition of the weird makes sense. The supernatural (evil) force is so strong and hyperbolically inscribed that it is almost out of place, that is, a collage displaying the wrong thing in the wrong environment.
In HORROR logic of 'both-and', the Lovecraftian promise of death and misery somehow provokes an analogous experience that almost moves in a religious direction.
Lovecraft decentres the human scientifically and religiously, but also as epistemology in terms of plain perception.
HORROR as such is not in the first place to be found in the phantasmagorical monsters, which rather function as a medium for the real HORROR, which is the encounter with the Kantian Ding an sich, the thing-in-itself, the nothingness that haunts the human.
Chapter 7
Scott Matthews draws attention to HORROR tropes in Alice Munro's novel Lives of Girls and Women (1971).
While the genre seeks to distinguish itself from its American and British counterparts, several familiar HORROR tropes—including madness, spatial liminality, and confinement—are presented in Munro's novel.
Thus, the novel reinforces the importance of the connection between character and setting in the HORROR tradition.
To these tropes, it is fairly easy to add a version of the threat of male power. Of course, this is perhaps one of the more well-known and established HORROR motifs or tropes, but it is equally clear that it has certain idiosyncratic traits in Munro's fictional landscape.
In Munro's everyday HORROR, the threat takes on a very uncomfortable air, since it gets manifested as something so realistic that it almost feels metaphysical at the same time, which is an effect often produced by a seemingly absolute inability to escape.
In other words, Munro's fiction makes manifest male violence that does not seem to be out of the ordinary from the perspective of quotidian life, but precisely because of that, the threat is so sudden and strong that it acquires an almost surreal aura.
As can be seen in Matthew's outline, the limitrophy has clear spatiotemporal connections. The (hau)ontology has in previous chapters of this study mainly been focused upon in terms of temporality. The reason to return to Munro at this stage is to further emphasise the function of temporality as hauntology and to stress the everyday HORROR and the concomitant everyday hauntology, not least as indicators of the versatility of the HORROR genre.
HORROR of male violence and near-metaphysical power will be analysed through close readings of Munro's short stories “Free Radicals”, “Runaway” and “Passion”, which are selected by containing some of the HORROR traits mentioned above and in addition to that, they exhibit intriguing hauntological dynamics.
In Munro's everyday HORROR, the threat takes on a very uncomfortable air, since it gets manifested as something so realistic that it almost feels metaphysical at the same time, which is an effect often produced by a seemingly absolute inability to escape.
The major structure in Munro's HORROR fiction is of course to transfer some central HORROR motifs and tropes into a contemporary domestic sphere.
In this tale, we encounter a similar everyday HORROR, which is mostly present through an intricate hauntological dynamism and by its setting at the fringes of rural habitations, with the wilderness close at hand, and road-nets that gradually peter out into the unknown.
In terms of HORROR tropes, the narrative performs a play with the notion of the dangerous male who will abduct the damsel in distress and have his way with her.
In terms of HORROR tropes, the narrative performs a play with the notion of the dangerous male who will abduct the damsel in distress and have his way with her.
Jay
15 March 2025
Now I have to check if our library has any Alice Munroe. Thanks, Jay. This was interesting. 🐈⬛
Love gothic