Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and the Nonhuman

207 Pages·2021·3.192 MB·English

by  Sladja Blazan

PALGRAVE GOTHIC
Haunted
Nature
Entanglements of the Human
and the Nonhuman
Luke Roberts
Edited by Sladja Blazan
Palgrave Gothic
Series Editor
Clive Bloom
Middlesex University
London, UK
Dating back to the eighteenth century, the term ‘gothic’ began as a designation
for an artistic movement when British antiquarians became dissatisfied
with the taste for all things Italianate. By the twentieth century, the Gothic
was a worldwide phenomenon influencing global cinema and the emergent
film industries of Japan and Korea. Gothic influences are evident through-
out contemporary culture: in detective fiction, television programmes,
Cosplay events, fashion catwalks, music styles, musical theatre, ghostly
tourism and video games, as well as being constantly reinvented online. It
is no longer an antiquarian pursuit but the longest lasting influence in
popular culture, reworked and re-experienced by each new generation.
This series offers readers the very best in new international research and
scholarship on the historical development, cultural meaning and diversity
of gothic culture. While covering Gothic origins dating back to the eigh-
teenth century, the Palgrave Gothic series also drives exciting new discus-
sions on dystopian, urban and Anthropocene gothic sensibilities emerging
in the twenty-first century. The Gothic shows no sign of obsolescence.
Editorial Advisory Board:
Dr. Ian Conrich, University of Vienna, Austria
Barry Forshaw, author/journalist, UK
Professor Gregg Kucich, University of Notre Dame, USA
Professor Gina Wisker, University of Brighton, UK
Dr. Catherine Wynne, University of Hull, UK
Dr. Alison Peirse, University of Yorkshire, UK
Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Professor William Hughes, University of Macau, China
Dr. Antonio Alcala Gonzalez, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
Dr. Marius Crisa̦ n, West University of Timiso̧ ara, Romania
Dr. Manuel Aguirre, independent scholar, Spain
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14698
Sladja Blazan
Editor
Haunted Nature
Entanglements of the Human and the Nonhuman
Editor
Sladja Blazan
English and American Studies
University of Würzburg
Würzburg, Germany
ISSN 2634-6214 ISSN 2634-6222 (electronic)
Palgrave Gothic
ISBN 978-3-030-81868-5 ISBN 978-3-030-81869-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81869-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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A
cknowledgments
This project began before the global pandemic struck, when the threat
of global catastrophic change was all pervading, but still somehow
intangible and indefinite. Something terrible was imminent, but what
form it would take was not yet sure, like a monster that has not yet cho-
sen its earthly form.
To address this urgent, omnipresent yet inexpressible feeling, I assem-
bled a group of theorists and writers to examine ways we might use gothic
and horror to address fears of climate change, environmental collapse, and
related threats. Is this not what the gothic has always expressed so well—
unknowable, inescapable doom?
Now the world has changed. The pandemic is here and the world will
keep changing. I began with a co-editor, whose work in this field was one
of the reasons I was keen to embark on this writing adventure. She got
lost, consumed by forces of the pandemic. So did four other contributors.
It has been a strange and testing journey. If it wasn’t for the many interest-
ing, supportive, intellectually stimulating people travelling with me, it
would have been impossible to persevere.
To begin, I’d like to thank my two anonymous reviewers for supporting
this project and for their helpful suggestions. Lina Aboujieb and Asma
Azeezullah are the most wonderful and supportive editors that have
accompanied the publishing process from beginning to end. Thank you!
The seeds for this topic were sown during a graduate class I taught at
the University of Würzburg in the winter of 2019. I want to thank my
students, whose curiosity and often surprising perspectives keep me not
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vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
only intellectually engaged, but they give vital meaning to this work. My
students kept reminding me that every little step matters. Thank you for
being who you are!
The next step that mattered in this project was a symposium I orga-
nized at the University of Würzburg in the same winter. I want to thank
all the presenters, some of whom became contributors to this volume. I’d
like to thank Sandy Alexandre, an always engaging intellectual partner,
whose friendship has brought me through many loops, Dawn Keetley for
her thought-provoking new ideas and tireless support, Elizabeth Parker
for pointing out that too much water is used to make films about the
shortage of water, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet for reminding me that
things are sometimes just the way they seem, Justin D. Edwards, Johan
Höglund, Alexandra Hauke, Catrin Gersdorf, Elisabeth Scherer, Elmar
Schenkel, Annemarie Mönch, and many more. I’d like to thank all of the
participants for the discussions, their questions, and their support and all
of the people at the American Studies department at the University of
Würzburg. And special thanks to Hannah Nelson-Teutsch and Matthew
McGinity for a marvelous poster that will always remind me of how beau-
tiful haunted entanglements can be.
To all the people in my family who endured living with a writer and
editor in  lockdown, thank you. I promise to cook something nice
really soon.
Special thanks goes to Eva Hedrich, Rebecca Grözinger, Marie
Beckmann, and Nina Wintermeyer for making sure that there was a forum
for discussion to begin with. Last but not the least, this project would not
have existed without the generous support of the Fritz Thyssen-
Foundation. I want to thank all involved in making this possible.
c
ontents
1 Haunting and Nature: An Introduction 1
Sladja Blazan
2 Microgothic: Microbial Aesthetics of Haunted Nature 21
Davina Höll
3 Black Mold, White Extinction: I Am the Pretty Thing
That Lives in the House, The Haunting of Hill House, “Gray
Matter,” and H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Shunned House” 43
Dawn Keetley
4 Vegetomorphism: Exploring the Material Within the
Aesthetics of the EcoGothic in Stranger Things and
Annihilation 67
Sladja Blazan
5 An Ecology of Abject Women: Frontier Gothicism and
Ecofeminism in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived
in the Castle 91
Alexandra Hauke
6 Alligators in the Living Room: Terror and Horror in
the Capitalocene 115
Johan Höglund
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viii CONTENTS
7 Haunted Technonature: Anthropocene Coloniality in
Ng Yi-Sheng’s Lion City 135
Rebecca Duncan
8 Haunted Nature, Haunted Humans: Intelligent Trees,
Gaia, and the Apocalypse Meme 159
Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet
9 The Global Poltergeist: COVID-19 Hauntings 181
Simon C. Estok
Index 197
n c
otes on ontributors
Sladja Blazan is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of
Würzburg. She received her PhD from Humboldt University Berlin in 2005.
Recently she completed a manuscript that explores the intersection of spec-
trality and morality under the title Ghosts and Their Hosts: Spectrality in Early
U.S. American Literature and Culture. This publication is currently under
review. Previous publications include American Fictionary: Postsozialistische
Migration in der nordamerikanischen Literatur (Heidelberg: Winter, 2006);
an edited collection with Nigel Hatton, Literature and Refugees (Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 2018); with Avital Ronell, What Was I Thinking:
A Critical Autobiography and Spectral Colloquy (Berlin: Hauptstadtkulturfonds,
2011); and Ghost Stories and Alternative Histories (Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2007). Her areas of research include speculative fiction,
critical posthumanism, critical refugee studies, and migration as a liter-
ary topic.
Rebecca Duncan is Crafoord Foundation postdoctoral researcher at the
Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial
Studies (Sweden). She is the author of South African Gothic (University of
Wales/University of Chicago Press 2018), which was shortlisted for the
2019 Allan Lloyd Smith prize. Her recent work includes articles for
ARIEL and Science Fiction Film and Television and the co-edited projects
Patrick McGrath and his Worlds (Routledge 2020) and “The Body Now”
(2020), a special issue of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial
Studies. She has research interests in world literature, political ecology,
speculative fiction, and decolonial thinking.
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