The New Urban Gothic : Global Gothic in the Age of the Anthropocene

259 Pages·2020·4.2 MB·English

by  Holly-Gale Millette, Ruth Heholt

PALGRAVE GOTHIC
The New Urban
Gothic
Global Gothic in the Age of
the Anthropocene
Luke Roberts
Edited by
Holly-Gale Millette · Ruth Heholt
Palgrave Gothic
Series Editor
Clive Bloom
Middlesex University
London, UK
ThisseriesofGothicbooksisthefirsttotreatthegenreinitsmanyinter-
related, global and ‘extended’ cultural aspects to show how the taste for
the medieval and the sublime gave rise to a perverse taste for terror and
horrorandhowthattastebecamenotonlyinternational(withahugefan
base in places such as South Korea and Japan) but also the sensibility of
themodernage,changingourattitudestosuchdiverseareasasthenature
of the artist, the meaning of drug abuse and the concept of the self. The
series is accessible but scholarly, with referencing kept to a minimum and
theory contextualised where possible. All the books are readable by an
intelligent student or a knowledgeable general reader interested in the
subject.
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 Crisan, West University of Timis¸oara, Romania
,
Dr. Manuel Aguirre, independent scholar, Spain
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14698
·
Holly-Gale Millette Ruth Heholt
Editors
The New Urban
Gothic
Global Gothic in the Age of the Anthropocene
Editors
Holly-Gale Millette Ruth Heholt
Winchester School of Art School of Writing and Journalism
University of Southampton Falmouth University
Winchester, UK Cornwall, UK
ISSN 2634-6214 ISSN 2634-6222 (electronic)
Palgrave Gothic
ISBN 978-3-030-43776-3 ISBN 978-3-030-43777-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43777-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Contents
The New Urban Gothic: Introduction 1
Holly-Gale Millette
Urban Gothic: Identities and Histories
Exquisite Corpse: The Urban Gothic Mindscape in China
Miéville’s The Last Days of New Paris 25
Karl Bell
‘Things Are Not as They Seem’: Colonialism, Capitalism
and Neo-Victorian London in The Order: 1886 41
Michael Fuchs
A Very Queer Black Country 57
R. M. Francis
Abjection and Anime in the Anthropocene: Amano
and Oshii’s Angel’s Egg 73
Kwasu David Tembo
v
vi CONTENTS
Urban Gothic: Ruin and Residue in the Anthropocene
‘A Weapon in the Cracks’: Wasteways Between Worlds
in the New Urban Gothic 97
Garth Sabo
The City and the Underground in Metro 2033 and Metro:
Last Light 113
Madelon Hoedt
‘EverythingIsTrue’:UrbanGothicMeetstheChthulucene
in Multiplayer Online Game, The Secret World 131
Tanya Krzywinska
Rust Belt Ruins: The Gothic Genius Loci of Detroit 149
Leila Taylor
Global Gothic: Decentring the Urban Gothic
Communal After-Living: Asian Ghosts and the City 173
Katarzyna Ancuta
Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness as New
Urban Gothic 191
Molly Slavin
Urban Gothic: Singapore 205
Gina Wisker
Suzhou River: ‘On the [Haunted] Waterfront’ 221
Annemarie Lopez
A Gothic Barcelona?: Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Cemetery
of Forgotten Books Series and Franco’s Legacy 237
Xavier Aldana Reyes
Index 251
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Dr. Holly-Gale Millette is a Senior Teaching Fellow at Southampton
University UK. A Social and Cultural Historian publishing regularly in
internationaljournalsandbooks,recentworkhasfocusedonspatial,polit-
ical and psychosocial representations of urban cultures and also the new
Urban Gothic in cultural theory and media texts.
Dr. Ruth Heholt is Senior Lecturer in English at Falmouth University.
She is co-editor of several collections including: Gothic Britain: Dark
PlacesintheProvincesandMarginsoftheBritishIsles (2018)withWilliam
Hughes, The Victorian Male Body (2018) with Joanne Ella Parsons and
Haunted Landscapes (2017) with Niamh Downing. She has organised
severalsymposiaandiseditorofthepeer-reviewedjournalRevenant:Crit-
icalandCreativeStudiesoftheSupernatural.Sheiscurrentlyworkingon
a monograph on the Victorian author Catherine Crowe.
Contributors
Dr. Xavier Aldana Reyes is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and
Film at Manchester Metropolitan University and a founder member of
the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. His books include Spanish
Gothic (2017), Horror: A Literary History (editor, 2016), Horror Film
vii
viii EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
and Affect (2016), and Body Gothic (2014). Xavier is chief editor of the
Horror Studies book series published by the University of Wales Press.
Dr. Katarzyna Ancuta is a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University in
Bangkok, Thailand. Her research interests oscillate around the interdisci-
plinarycontextsofcontemporaryGothic/Horror,currentlywithastrong
Asian focus. Her recent publications include contributions to A New
Companion to the Gothic (2012), Globalgothic (2013), The Cambridge
Companion to the Modern Gothic (2014), Neoliberal Gothic (2017),
The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story (2017), and B-Movie Gothic
(2018). She also co-edited three special journal issues on Thai (2014)
and Southeast Asian (2015) horror film and Tropical Gothic (2019), and
a collection Thai Cinema: The Complete Guide (2018).
Dr. Karl Bell isaReaderinCulturalandSocialHistoryattheUniversity
ofPortsmouth,andDirectoroftheSupernaturalCitiesproject(supernat-
uralcities.co.uk).Heistheauthoroftwomonographs,TheMagicalImag-
ination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780–1914 (2012),
and the award-winning The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack: Victorian
Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures (2017). His research explores the
supernatural and the fantastical imagination from the late-eighteenth to
the twentieth century.
Dr. R. M. Francis is a writer from the Black Country. He graduated
with distinction from Teesside University’s Creative Writing MA and
recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Wolverhampton. He is
author of five poetry chapbooks. In 2020 Smokestack Books will publish
his first full collection and Wild Pressed Books are publishing his debut
novel.HewastheinauguralDavidBradshawWriterinResidence2019at
Oxford University.
Dr. Michael Fuchs is a fixed-term Assistant Professor in American
studies at the University of Graz in Austria. He has co-edited six collec-
tions,mostrecentlyIntermediaGames—GamesInterMedia:VideoGames
andIntermediality (2019).Inaddition,hehasauthoredandco-authored
more than a dozen journal articles, which have appeared in venues such
as The Journal of Popular Culture, The Journal of Popular Television and
the Quarterly of Film and Video, and more than thirty book chapters
in volumes such as The Cambridge History of Science Fiction (2019),
Ecogothic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2018), Horror
EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS ix
Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear (2018), and B-
Movie Gothic: International Perspectives (2018). Among others, he is
currentlyputtingthefinishingtouchestoaco-editedvolumeonAmerican
urbanspacesinthefantasticimaginationandworkingonamonographon
urban spaces in American horror movies.
Dr. Madelon Hoedt is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Drama,
Theatre, and Performance at the University of Huddersfield (UK). Her
Ph.D. “Acting Out: The Pleasures of Performance Horror” focuses on
genre,performance,stagecraft,andaudienceaffect.Inherotherresearch,
she is concerned with issues of narrative and embodied experience in live
performance and video games (specifically in relation to horror and the
Gothic). She is currently working on two monographs, one on immer-
sive horror performance experiences, and one on the Gothic videogame
Bloodborne (FromSoftware, 2015).
Prof. Tanya Krzywinska is Professor of Digital Games and Director of
the Games Academy at Falmouth University. Beginning her academic
career when videogames were largely invisible and far from respectable,
she’ssoughttoarguefortheimportanceofgamesasanewartform.She
is the author of several books and many articles on different aspects of
video games and representations of the Gothic. Currently she is working
on a monograph, Gothic Games, and, when time allows, she is an artist.
Dr. Annemarie Lopez is an arts writer and the former editor of The
Week, Australia. She recently completed a Ph.D. in crime fiction and
psychogeography at Macquarie University, Sydney.
Dr. Garth Sabo received his doctorate from the Department of English
at Michigan State University. His research draws on material ecocriti-
cism, narratives of science, and scatological theory to explore how waste,
particularlyhumanexcrementandurine,permeatestheculturalimaginary
of contemporary English-language fiction. His monograph project tracks
culturalrelationshipstohumanwasteacrossthetwentiethandtwenty-first
centuriesinlightofkeychangestothescientific,ecological,andaesthetic
understanding of bodily waste and the human microbiome.
Dr. Molly Slavin is a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the
GeorgiaInstituteofTechnology(Atlanta,GA,USA),specialisinginrepre-
sentations of crime in postcolonial and global Anglophone fiction. She
has published articles in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Global