Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and the Nonhuman (Palgrave Gothic)

This volume is a study of human entanglements with Nature as seen through the mode of haunting. As an interruption of the present by the past, haunting can express contemporary anxieties concerning our involvement in the transformation of natural environments and their ecosystems, and our complicity in their collapse. It can also express a much-needed sense of continuity and relationality. The complexity of the question―who and what gets to be called human with respect to the nonhuman―is reflected in these collected chapters, which, in their analysis of cinematic and literary representations of sentient Nature within the traditional gothic trope of haunting, bring together history, race, postcolonialism, and feminism with ecocriticism and media studies. Given the growing demand for narratives expressing our troubled relationship with Nature, it is imperative to analyze this contested ground. “Chapter 6” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. Acknowledgments Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures Chapter 1: Haunting and Nature: An Introduction Haunting Nature Anthropocene/Capitalocene/Chthulucene and the Ecogothic Trajectory Works Cited Chapter 2: Microgothic: Microbial Aesthetics of Haunted Nature The Origins of the Microgothic “All monstrous, all prodigious things”: William Heath’s “Monster Soup” “[P]rofoundly vicious, treacherous and malignant”: Mark Twain’s Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes The Microbiome and Its Epistemological and Aesthetic Challenges in BioArt “And I held it in my hand, the most terrifying of all ills”: Anna Dumitriu’s The Bacterial Sublime Conclusion: The Persistence of the Microgothic Works Cited Chapter 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” Black Mold and Post-Death Existence White Post-Death Climate Crisis, Extinction Fears Black Growth, White Extinction Black Mold, Black Slavery Works Cited Chapter 4: Vegetomorphism: Exploring the Material Within the Aesthetics of the EcoGothic in Stranger Things and Annihilation The Vegetation Belt The Monstrous Root Human Phytographia and Vegetomorphism Indigenous Roots of Chthonic Monsters in Popular Culture Works Cited Chapter 5: An Ecology of Abject Women: Frontier Gothicism and Ecofeminism in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle Introduction: Frontier Realism, Gothic Symbolism, and Ecological Feminism Frontier Aesthetics and Ecofeminist Politics in We Have Always Lived in the Castle Conclusion: Haunted Natures in the Twenty-First Century Works Cited Chapter 6: Alligators in the Living Room: Terror and Horror in the Capitalocene Introduction (Representing) Capitalocene Violence in the Global North and South Gothic and Horror in the Capitalocene: Crawl Conclusion Works Cited Chapter 7: Haunted Technonature: Anthropocene Coloniality in Ng Yi-Sheng’s Lion City Singapore and Anthropocene Hegemony Uncanny Technonature Singapore, Crisis, and Environmental Management Coloniality and the Capitalocene Haunting the Anthropocene Irrealist Aetiologies Decolonizing Emergency Works Cited Chapter 8: Haunted Nature, Haunted Humans: Intelligent Trees, Gaia, and the Apocalypse Meme Intelligent Trees and Haunted Nature Apocalyptic Endings and Haunted Humans Works Cited Chapter 9: The Global Poltergeist: COVID-19 Hauntings Works Cited Correction To: Alligators in the Living Room: Terror and Horror in the Capitalocene Index