Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture

Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture: Technogothics. Justin D. Edwards, editor. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature Vol. 32. New York: Routledge, 2015, 2019.[1]

Reviewed briefly by Kristen Koopmen, SFRA Review #316 (Spring 2016): pp. 23-24.[2]

From the publisher's Book Description for the 2019 imprint.

[...A] collection with contributions from some of the major scholars of the Gothic in literature and culture, reflects on how recent Gothic studies have foregrounded a plethora of technologies associated with Gothic literary and cultural production. [... These] essays look into the links between technologies and the proliferation of the Gothic seen in an excess of Gothic texts and tropes: Frankensteinesque experiments, the manufacture of synthetic (true?) blood, Moreauesque hybrids, the power of the Borg, Dr Jekyll’s chemical experimentations, the machinery of Steampunk, or the corporeal modifications of Edward Scissorhands. Further, they explore how techno-science has contributed to the proliferation of the Gothic [...] in social media, digital technologies, the on-line gaming and virtual Goth/ic communities, the special effects of Gothic-horror cinema. Contributors address how Gothic technologies have [...] produced and perpetuated ideologies and influenced the politics of cultural practice, asking significant questions: How has the technology of the Gothic contributed to the writing of self and other? How have Gothic technologies been gendered, sexualized, encrypted, coded or de-coded? How has the Gothic manifested itself in new technologies across diverse geographical locations? This volume explores how Gothic technologies textualize identities and construct communities within a complex network of power relations in local, national, transnational, and global contexts. [...][3]

Contents include

Introduction: "Technogothics" by Justin D. Edwards  
1. "Technospectrality: Essay on Uncannimedia" by Fred Botting  
2." Gothic Fiction and the Evolution of Media Technology" by Joseph Crawford  
3. "Eerie Technologies and Gothic Acoustemology" by Justin D. Edwards  [...] 
5. "Braaiinnsss!: Zombie-Technology, Play and Sound" by Kelly Gardner  

 9. Nanodead: The Technologies of Death in Ian McDonald’s Necroville Rune Graulund  10. Staging the Extraordinary Body: Masquerading Disability in Patrick McGrath’s Martha Peake Alan Gregory  11. Text as Gothic Murder Machine: The Cannibalism of Sawney Bean and Sweeney Todd Maisha Wester  12. Neoliberal Adventures in Neo-Victorian Biopolitics: Mark Hodder’s Burton and Swinburn Novels Linnie Blake  13. Language Will Eat Your Brain Peter Schwenger