Horror and Philosophy : Essays on Their Intersection in Film, Television and Literature

Horror, no matter the medium, has always retained some influence of philosophy. Horror literature, cinema, comic books and television expose audiences to an "alien" reality, playing with the logical mind and challenging "known" concepts such as normality, reality, family and animals. Both making strange what was previously familiar, philosophy and horror feed each other. This edited collection investigates the intersections of horror and philosophical thinking, spanning across media including literature, cinema and television. Topics covered include the cinema of David Lynch; Scream and Alien: Resurrection ; the relationships between Jorge Luis Borges and H. P. Lovecraft; horror authors Blake Crouch and Paul Tremblay; Indian film; the television series Atlanta ; and the horror comic book Dylan Dog . Philosophers discussed include Julia Kristeva, George Berkeley, Michel Foucault, and the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit. Using philosophies like posthumanism, Afro-Pessimism and others, it explores connections between nightmare allegories, postmodern fragmentation, the ahuman sublime and much more. Cover Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1: Postmodernist Storytelling The Rhetoric of Contemplative Horror Nightmare Allegory Inland Empire and Reconciling Postmodern Fragmentation “It’s all a movie” Part 2: Literary Horrors, Philosophical Inquiries The Disembodied Voice and Its Digital Dreaming Borges’s Defense of Berkeley’s Idealism in “There are more things” Horror of ­Decision-Making Epistemologies of Horror and Narrative Construction Part 3: Subhuman, Animality, Colonialism—The Horrors of the Other The Horror of X Four Men Before the Imminent Greed Is NOT Good The Lure of Folk Horror Entering the Ecosystem Posthumanism, Sexism Part 4: Seriality—Comics, Television, Shorts The Black Universes of Donald Glover and Hiro Murai Moral Relativism and the Horror of Self in Season 2 of AMC’s The Walking Dead The Horror Versus L’Indagatore dell’Incubo Body Horror Behind the Wheel About the Contributors Index