Neoliberal Gothic: International Gothic in the Neoliberal Age

241 Pages·2017·3.55 MB·English

by  Linnie Blake, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet

Neoliberal gothic
The Series’ Board of General Editors
Elisabeth Bronfen, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Steven Bruhm, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Ken Gelder, University of Melbourne, Australia
Jerrold Hogle, University of Arizona, USA (Chair)
Avril Horner, Kingston University, UK
William Hughes, Bath Spa University, UK
The Editorial Advisory Board
Glennis Byron, University of Stirling, Scotland
Robert Miles, University of Victoria, Canada
David Punter, University of Bristol, England
Andrew Smith, University of Glamorgan, Wales
Anne Williams, University of Georgia, USA
Previously published
Monstrous media/ spectral subjects: imaging gothic from the nineteenth century
to the present Edited by Fred Botting and Catherine Spooner
Globalgothic Edited by Glennis Byron
EcoGothic Edited by Andrew Smith and William Hughes
Neoliberal gothic
International gothic in the
neoliberal age
Edited by Linnie Blake and
Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Manchester University Press 2017
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press,
copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter
may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of
both author and publisher.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing- in- Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 1 5261 1344 3 hardback
First published 2017
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.
Typeset by Out of House Publishing
Linnie Blake would like to dedicate this book to her mother,
Sheila Robinson – whose lifelong radicalism has never failed to
inspire and motivate – and to Ella and Freya Blake who will
carry all she has taught us into the future. Agnieszka Soltysik
Monnet would like to dedicate it to Christian, for his
full- spectrum home economics of nourishing conversation,
moral support and loving companionship.

Contents
Notes on contributors page ix
Series editors’ preface xii
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction: neoliberal gothic 1
Linnie Blake and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet
Part I: Neoliberal gothic monsters
1 Game of fangs: the vampire and neoliberal subjectivity 21
Aspasia Stephanou
2 Austerity bites: refiguring Dracula in a neoliberal age 38
Stéphanie Genz
3 Staging spectrality: capitalising (on) ghosts in German
postdramatic theatre 56
Barry Murnane
Part II: Biotechnologies, neoliberalism and the gothic
4 The return of the dismembered: representing organ
trafficking in Asian cinemas 83
Katarzyna Ancuta
viii Contents
5 Catastrophic events and queer northern villages:
zombie pharmacology In the Flesh 104
Linnie Blake
6 Gothic vulnerability: affect and ethics in fiction from
neoliberal South Africa 122
Rebecca Duncan
Part III: The gothic home and neoliberalism
7 Market value: American Horror Story’s housing crisis 145
Karen E. Macfarlane
8 Haunted by the ghost: from global economics to domestic
anxiety in contemporary art practice 161
Tracy Fahey
Part IV: Crossing borders
9 Gothic meltdown: German nuclear cinema in
neoliberal times 179
Steffen Hantke
10 Border gothic: Gregory Nava’s Bordertown and the dark
side of NAFTA 200
Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet
Index 215
Contributors
Katarzyna Ancuta is a lecturer at Assumption University in Bangkok,
Thailand. Her research interests oscillate around the interdiscipli-
nary contexts of contemporary gothic/h orror, currently with a strong
Asian focus. Her recent publications include contributions to A
New Companion to the Gothic (2012), Global Gothic (2013) and The
Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic (2014), as well as two
co- edited special journal issues on Thai (2014) and Southeast Asian
(2015) horror film.
Linnie Blake is Principal Lecturer and Director of the Centre for
Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the
author of The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma
and National Identity (Manchester University Press, 2008) and co-
editor (with X. Aldana Reyes) of Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies,
Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon (2015). She has also
published on a variety of gothic topics in journals such as Gothic Studies,
Horror Studies and Cultural Sociology.
Rebecca Duncan completed her DAAD- funded doctorate at Giessen
University (Germany) in 2015. She is the author of the forthcoming
South African Gothic, and has published articles and book chapters
on topics relating to postcolonial and South African textual cultures,
the gothic and the speculative, and materialist ecocriticism. She cur-
rently teaches in the Division of Languages and Literatures at Stirling
University in Scotland.