Papers by Karen Macfarlane
The Australasian journal of popular culture, Dec 1, 2023
Monsters have been rehabilitated in popular culture, moved from the realm of the truly monstrous ... more Monsters have been rehabilitated in popular culture, moved from the realm of the truly monstrous to the world of neoliberal 'sameness'. The zombies of In the Flesh and the vampires in True Blood, as only two examples of this trend, have lost their monstrous edge and have come to represent different ways of being human. While some discussions of this reimagined monster describe the weaving of monsters into mainstream culture as a way of acting out discourses of inclusion, I argue here that contemporary narratives that focus on monsters as metaphors for difference and inclusion are, ultimately, not providing a vision of a utopian world of equality. Instead, these representations are enacting a dystopian vision of a neoliberal social order that demonstrates a fear of true or radical difference.
Australian Journal of Popular Culture , 2023
Monsters have been rehabilitated in popular culture, moved from the realm of the truly monstrous ... more Monsters have been rehabilitated in popular culture, moved from the realm of the truly monstrous to the world of neoliberal 'sameness'. The zombies of In the Flesh and the vampires in True Blood, as only two examples of this trend, have lost their monstrous edge and have come to represent different ways of being human. While some discussions of this reimagined monster describe the weaving of monsters into mainstream culture as a way of acting out discourses of inclusion, I argue here that contemporary narratives that focus on monsters as metaphors for difference and inclusion are, ultimately, not providing a vision of a utopian world of equality. Instead, these representations are enacting a dystopian vision of a neoliberal social order that demonstrates a fear of true or radical difference.
The Creepy Little Girl is a subset of the Gothic Child and as such, she works differently from th... more The Creepy Little Girl is a subset of the Gothic Child and as such, she works differently from the evil child or the monstrous child in contemporary Gothic. Unlike the contradictions inherent in representations of the evil child whose presence is disruption and destruction, or the monstrous child who is dangerous, the Creepy Little Girl serves as a function of the Gothic: she is that figure through which the narrative is unsettled and the Gothic intrudes. The Creepy Little Girl is defined by her hypergendered position in the narratives in which she appears: as both 'little' and very much as 'girl'. The little girl's presence in contemporary gothic narratives destabilises the familiar, the domestic, and the cute and that is the basis for the gothic unease that she engenders.
English Studies in Canada , 2013
When i was originally invited to think about imperfections for the accute session, I told a frien... more When i was originally invited to think about imperfections for the accute session, I told a friend about the focus of the panel. Her immediate thought was that I should have a look at the current scholarly work that is being done on failure. My initial response was one of recognition and agreement because I know that there is a lot of interesting work being done on failure ... but after a moment I started to really think about that unhesitating move from imperfection to failure and what it means. And that is what I want to discuss here. Failure, however interesting, is not, I think, the same as imperfection. But the connection between the two terms says a lot, I would like to suggest, about digital and mechanical reproduction, aesthetics and value in contemporary cultural discourse. How are we constructing flaws-something fundamental to the creation of art, to conceptions of beauty, to the normal-as failures? What does that say about our expectations of ourselves, our art, our thinking? I had all of this in mind the other day-and was going to try to wax philosophical about it-when a morning television show was all a twitter about a supermodel (Gisele Bündchen) who had published a photo spread
Dissertation: McGill University
Text Matters, 2016
It has become a truism in discussions of Imperialist literature to state that the British empire ... more It has become a truism in discussions of Imperialist literature to state that the British empire was, in a very significant way, a textual exercise. Empire was simultaneously created and perpetuated through a proliferation of texts (governmental, legal, educational, scientific, fictional) driven significantly by a desire for what Thomas Richards describes as “one great system of knowledge.” The project of assembling this system assumed that all of the “alien” knowledges that it drew upon could be easily assimilated into existing, “universal” (that is, European) epistemological categories. This belief in “one great system” assumed that knowledges from far-flung outposts of empire could, through careful categorization and control, be made to reinforce, rather than threaten, the authority of imperial epistemic rule. But this movement into “new” epistemic as well as physical spaces opened up the disruptive possibility for and encounter with Foucault’s “insurrection of subjugated knowled...
Atlantis Critical Studies in Gender Culture Social Justice, Feb 23, 2012
"Market Value: Amerian Horror Story's Housing Crisis", 2017
The tenets of neoliberalism that focus on the privatisation and on an unfettered free market hav... more The tenets of neoliberalism that focus on the privatisation and on an unfettered free market have their gothic manifestation in the relationship between the house and the American family in the world after the 2010 mortgage crisis. This is played out in the first season of "American Horror Story"
Zombies are ubiquitous in twenty-first-century culture, and are generally read, as many monsters ... more Zombies are ubiquitous in twenty-first-century culture, and are generally read, as many monsters are, as metaphors for such anxieties as the horrors of mechanized labour, of unbridled consumerism, of global pandemics and on and on …. In this article, I argue that the zombie's multiple and hybrid origins and meto-nymic associations make it a monster for the digital age. As posthuman fantasies of disembodiment become increasingly more possible, the corporeality of the zombie functions as a reminder of the fundamentally embodied nature of our experiences with and in cyberspace. In this sense, I argue, the zombie functions as a sign for the horrors of networked culture and its terrifying potential for monstrous replication.
A b s t r A c t It has become a truism in discussions of Imperialist literature to state that the... more A b s t r A c t It has become a truism in discussions of Imperialist literature to state that the British empire was, in a very significant way, a textual exercise. Empire was simultaneously created and perpetuated through a proliferation of texts (governmental, legal, educational, scientific, fictional) driven significantly by a desire for what Thomas Richards describes as " one great system of knowledge. " The project of assembling this system assumed that all of the " alien " knowledges that it drew upon could be easily assimilated into existing, " universal " (that is, European) epistemological categories. This belief in " one great system " assumed that knowledges from far-flung outposts of empire could, through careful categorization and control, be made to reinforce, rather than threaten, the authority of imperial epis-temic rule. But this movement into " new " epistemic as well as physical spaces opened up the disruptive possibility for and encounter with Fou-cault's " insurrection of subjugated knowledges. " In the Imperial Gothic stories discussed here, the space between " knowing all there is to know " and the inherent unknowability of the " Other " is played out through representations of failures of classification and anxieties about the limits of knowledge. These anxieties are articulated through what is arguably one of the most heavily regulated signifiers of scientific progress at the turn of the century: the body. In an age that was preoccupied with bodies as spectacles that signified everything from criminal behaviour, psychological disorder, moral standing and racial categorization, the mutable, un-classifiable body functions as a signifier that mediates between imperial fantasies of control and definition and fin-de-siècle anxieties of dissolution and degeneration. In Imperial Gothic fiction these fears appear as a series of complex explorations of the ways in which the gap between the known and the unknown can be charted on and through a monstrous body that moves outside of stable classification.
The Handmaid's Tale's intertextual gestures are not simply allusive, they are interrogative -- ex... more The Handmaid's Tale's intertextual gestures are not simply allusive, they are interrogative -- exploring and challenging the construction of texts and the context in which they are produced and read. This paper adds to that context by exploring the novel's intertextual relation to a peculiarly North American form of the Gothic: the "Escaped Nun's Tale". Reading this novel within this tradition positions it in the continuum of historical and cultural debates in North America which have deployed women's bodies and women's testimonies as a contested border space across and through which issues of ideology, religion, nation, and masculine authority are negotiated.
Monster theory, queer theory and Lady Gaga's queer monstrosity
This article argues that the figure of the reanimated mummy, which appeared with increasing frequ... more This article argues that the figure of the reanimated mummy, which appeared with increasing frequency in imperialist adventure fiction as the nineteenth century drew to a close, is the quintessential monster of imperial gothic. The sudden interest in a figure that some would describe as a fundamentally flawed monster (perhaps because it is simply too unambiguously dead) at this moment of turn-of-the-century fears of dissolution, degeneration and loss of control signals, I argue here, a profound anxiety about the epistemological underpinnings of the imperial project. In these stories, reanimated mummies move easily out of their stable positions as artefacts or relics and enter into the Western symbolic order as acting subjects (however conditionally) and as terrifying rivals for epistemological supremacy. HOST 1.1_art_Macfarlane_05-024.indd 5 HOST 1.1_art_Macfarlane_05-024.indd 5
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Papers by Karen Macfarlane