Neoliberal gothic: International gothic in the neoliberal age (International Gothic Series)

Over the course of the past twenty-five years, as neoliberal economics has transformed the geopolitical landscape, monsters have overrun popular culture. This book explores literary, televisual, filmic and dramatic works from distant and diverse countries. It traces the vampire's evolution from the nineteenth-century past of industrial capitalism to the neoliberal present's accelerated violence and corrupt precarity, and discusses the NBC television mini-series Dracula, perfectly encapsulating our own post-recessionary subjectivity. The book addresses state capitalism but turns readers' attention away from the vampire and towards the ghost, focusing on the ways in which such spectral figures have come to dominate new German theatre. On the biotechnology sector, the book presents three examples: cinematic depictions of the international organ trade in Asia, the BAFTA award winning three-part series In the Flesh broadcast in BBC3, and literary representations of the dehumanised South African poor. The book moves from the global to the local, and charts the ways in which post-2006 house owners are trapped in the house by the current economic situation, becoming akin to its long-term resident ghosts. The ghost estates, reanimated and reimagined by the Irish artists and film-makers, are shown to embody the price paid locally for failures in global economic policy. The preoccupation with states of liminality is encapsulated by showing that the borders of the nation state have become a permeable membrane. Through this membrane, the toxic waste of first world technology seeps out alongside the murderous economic imperatives of the neoliberal agenda. The Explosion Of Interest In The Gothic In Recent Years Has Coincided With A Number Of Seismic Political Changes That Have Reshaped The World As We Know It. Neoliberal Gothic Explores That World, Considering The Ways In Which The Exponential Increase In The Cultural Visibility Of The Gothic Attests To The Mode's Engagement With The Most Significant Dynamics Of Our Age. These Include The Triumph Of Free Market Economics, The Revolution In Information And Communication Technologies, The Emergence Of Global Biotechnologies, The Increasing Power Of Transnational Corporations, The Us-led 'war On Terror' And The Global Financial Crisis Of 2008. Through Analysis Of Texts Drawn From Literature, Film, Television, Theatre And The Visual Arts (from The Europe To South East Asia, Africa To North And South America) The Collection Examines The Ways In Which The Representational Strategies Of The Gothic Mode Are Ideally Suited To An Exploration Of The Dark Side Of Neoliberal Enterprise. Introduction : Neoliberal Gothic / Linnie Blake And Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet -- Game Of Fangs : The Vampire And Neoliberal Subjectivity / Aspasia Stephanou -- Austerity Bites : Refiguring Dracula In A Neoliberal Age / Stéphanie Genz -- Staging Spectrality : Capitalising (on) Ghosts In German Postdramatic Theatre -- Barry Murnane -- The Return Of The Dismembered : Representing Organ Trafficking In Asian Cinemas / Katarzyna Ancuta -- Catastrophic Events And Queer Northern Villages : Zombie Pharmacology In The Flesh / Linnie Blake -- Gothic Vulnerability : Affect And Ethics In Fiction From Neoliberal South Africa / Rebecca Duncan -- Market Value : American Horror Story's Housing Crisis / Karen E. Macfarlane -- Haunted By The Ghost: From Global Economics To Domestic Anxiety In Contemporary Art Practice / Tracy Fahey -- Gothic Meltdown : German Nuclear Cinema In Neoliberal Times / Steffen Hantke -- Border Gothic : Gregory Nava's Bordertown And The Dark Side Of Nafta / Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet. Edited By Linnie Blake And Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. "The deposition and exile of native monarchs was a key strategy in British and French efforts to secure control over their possessions in Asia and Africa. Taken as prisoners of war, implicated in rebellions or charged with misgovernment or immorality, indigenous rulers were dethroned and their dynasties sometimes abolished. They were then banished to distant places, in hopes they could not escape or serve as rallying-points for anti-colonial agitation. This wide-ranging study offers new insights into culture contact, indirect rule and indigenous agency in colonial situations. It examines the particular circumstances for the ouster of Asian and African emperors, kings and queens, maharajas and sultans. It looks at the often poignant lived experiences of the deposed rulers and their families in exile, assessing their later place in historical narrative and collective memory. Finally, it argues that even when colonisers 'kicked out' local sovereigns, they could not fully efface the potency of monarchism in national identity, anti-colonial campaigns and the heritage exiles left behind. Case studies range from the removal of the King of Kandy in Ceylon in 1815 - toppled and exiled just months after Napoleon was sent to St Helena - to the removal and restoration of King Mutesa of Uganda and Sultan Mohammed of Morocco in the 1950s. Appealing to specialists of colonial history, transnational history and the history of modern monarchy, Banished potentates provides a fascinating account of the exercise of imperial power, the paradoxes of royal exile and the legacies of indigenous dynasties" --Back cover A comprehensive study of how different Gothic forms have adapted, engaged with and represented the neoliberal agenda across the globe. -- . An examination of British and French deposition and exile of Indigenous monarchs in Asia and Africa from 1815 until the 1950s