Posthuman Gothic

Edited by Anya Heise-von der Lippe

Posthuman Gothic

Edited by Anya Heise-von der Lippe

Distributed for University of Wales Press

272 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2017
Gothic Literary Studies
Cloth $125.00 ISBN: 9781786831064 Published February 2018 For sale in North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand only
An edited collection of thirteen chapters, Posthuman Gothic explores 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; from Star Trek to The Truman Show—transgress the boundaries of genre and move beyond the traditional scope of the Gothic. These texts, the contributors argue, destabilize our conception of what it means to be human. Drawing on key texts of both Gothic and posthumanist theory, the contributors analyze varied themes: posthuman vampire and zombie narratives; genetically modified posthumans; the posthuman in video games, film, and television; 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, this book is the first attempt to address the complex intersections of the posthuman and the Gothic in contemporary literature and media.
 
Contents
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
Antonie 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 Mosntruous can only be Gothic, or Screening Alien Sex Fiends
Evan Hayles Gledhill
13 Gothic Inhumanism: Prometheanism, Nanotechnology, Accelerationism
Aspasia Stephanou
 
Bibliography
Index
 
Review Quotes
Professor Isabella van Elferen, Kingston University London
"This collection fills a long-standing hiatus in Gothic scholarship. Lucidly organised into the four orders of posthuman Gothic, this remarkable volume reconfigures our understanding of the post/human condition. Organic, Undead, Evolving, Reimagined – Posthuman Gothic reveals how traditional primacies and normativities shift, blend and dissolve. Finally."
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