Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters

Jack Halberstam

Published by Duke University Press 1995

Skin Shows

Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters

Jack Halberstam

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822398073

Overview
Contents

About this book

In this examination of the monster as cultural object, Judith Halberstam offers a rereading of the monstrous that revises our view of the Gothic. Moving from the nineteenth century and the works of Shelley, Stevenson, Stoker, and Wilde to contemporary horror film exemplified by such movies as Silence of the Lambs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Candyman, Skin Shows understands the Gothic as a versatile technology, a means of producing monsters that is constantly being rewritten by historically and culturally conditioned fears generated by a shared sense of otherness and difference.
Deploying feminist and queer approaches to the monstrous body, Halberstam views the Gothic as a broad-based cultural phenomenon that supports and sustains the economic, social, and sexual hierarchies of the time. She resists familiar psychoanalytic critiques and cautions against any interpretive attempt to reduce the affective power of the monstrous to a single factor. The nineteenth-century monster is shown, for example, as configuring otherness as an amalgam of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Invoking Foucault, Halberstam describes the history of monsters in terms of its shifting relation to the body and its representations. As a result, her readings of familiar texts are radically new. She locates psychoanalysis itself within the gothic tradition and sees sexuality as a beast created in nineteenth century literature. Excessive interpretability, Halberstam argues, whether in film, literature, or in the culture at large, is the actual hallmark of monstrosity.

Author / Editor information

Judith Halberstam is Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews

“Halberstam’s argument is elegant in its simplicity, but far-reaching in its implications. Providing a strikingly original account of the Gothic, she proposes through her work a cultural history of fear and prejudice and, thus, paves the way for a new scholarly enterprise."—Ann Cvetkovich, University of Texas, Austin

"Skin Shows is the Gothic book that many of us have been waiting for, and it is every bit as smart as we had hoped it would be. Halberstam’s notion of monstrosity will change Gothic studies for good. The results are dazzling."—George E. Haggerty, University of California, Riverside

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1 Parasites and Perverts: An Introduction to Gothic Monstrosity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 Making Monsters: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	28
3 Gothic Surface, Gothic Depth: The Subject of Secrecy in Stevenson and Wilde Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
4 Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker's Dracula Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	86
5 Reading Counterclockwise: Paranoid Gothic or Gothic Paranoia? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
6 Bodies That Splatter: Queers and Chain Saws Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
7 Skinflick: Posthuman Gender in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
8 Conclusion: Serial Killing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 232
Illustrations
- Other: 6 b&w photographs

eBook

Published: August 22, 1995
ISBN: 9780822398073