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Ethical Feeding and the Posthuman Vampire in Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance

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Ethical Feeding and the Posthuman Vampire in Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance CONTEMPORARY VAMPIRE GENRE FICTION: Ethical Feeding and the Posthuman Vampire in Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Leigh Marion McLennon ORCID 0000-0001-8218-3768 Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2017 School of Culture and Communication Faculty of Arts The University of Melbourne Abstract Contemporary vampire literature uses a bloodsucking monster to play with continually shifting social boundaries, to try on new identities, and to refract our world in a different, fantastic context. It has been widely acknowledged that from the later twentieth century onward, the vampire has become “humanised”: it has become a sympathetic figure that is no longer necessarily or definitively evil. However, this narrative of the vampire’s humanisation is often oversimplified, and closer study is needed to identify how and why representations of the vampire have further developed in the new millennium. In this thesis, I argue that since the 1980s, the vampire has developed in new ways as a posthuman figure. A vital concern has emerged over the increasingly problematic distinction between the human and the vampire, and the ways in which vampires and humans might interrelate. This concern is most clearly elaborated in relation to how and upon whom the vampire feeds. Taking a posthumanist and feminist theoretical position, I trace the ways in which representations of vampiric feeding have changed in recent decades, thereby identifying how the boundaries between the vampire and the human have been contested and renegotiated in new ways in recent vampire literature. As a response to and interrogation of the dramatic social shifts of the posthuman era, twenty-first-century vampire literature has divided into two popular strands. The first, dominant strand, urban fantasy and paranormal romance, embraces the posthuman vampire and celebrates its potential to forge symbiotic, mutually beneficial connections between the human and the monstrous. The second, less prominent strand, the post-apocalyptic vampire narrative, rejects the posthuman vampire, suggesting that this vampire is an atavistic evil, a harbinger of the disasters that must result when humans and monsters align and intertwine. In both these strands, the fragility of the boundaries that divide the self from the Other is foregrounded through transgressive acts of vampiric feeding. The thesis thus provides an original contribution to knowledge in three key areas. First, it provides a genre study of the (still critically underacknowledged) genre of urban fantasy and paranormal romance, and it identifies and outlines how post- apocalyptic vampire narratives emerge in opposition to that genre. Second, it offers a new critical perspective by reading the vampire as a species in the posthuman polis. And i third, by mapping contemporary representations of vampiric feeding, the thesis elucidates some of the ways that vampires in recent literature refract contemporary sociocultural anxieties about shifting conceptions of the self and the Other. ii Declaration This is to certify that: i. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the preface; ii. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used; and iii. the thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies, and appendices. _______________________ Leigh M. McLennon iii Acknowledgements I offer my sincere thanks and deeply felt gratitude to the following people, whose encouragement made it possible to complete this thesis. Thank you to my supervisors, who guided me throughout this research. I am indebted to Professor Peter Otto for his ongoing support, his enthusiasm, his generosity with his time, and his valuable critical contributions. I also thank Dr. Grace Moore for her insightful feedback and her encouragement. Dr. Katherine Firth has been an inspiration and a true mentor, not only in academia but in life. I could not have triumphed over the demon monkey without her. From the School of Culture and Communication, I would also like to thank Professor Ken Gelder for his advice given early in my candidature; Dr. David McInnis for his encouragement and support in teaching; and all of those in the school who assisted in coordinating my study and who gave freely of their time and knowledge. I thank the Faculty of Arts and Melbourne Scholarships for their financial support, including the Australian Postgraduate Award, the Graduate Research in Arts Travel Scheme, and the Overseas Research Experience Scholarship. I am grateful to the Melbourne Global Mobility programme and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for facilitating my graduate exchange to the UIUC English Department. In particular, I thank Dr. Aleksondra Hultquist, Professor Robert Markley, Professor Robert Rushing, Associate Professor Anthony Pollock, and Associate Professor Trish Loughran. Thank you also to the peers and friends who made me welcome in the USA and the members of the What You Will Shakespeare company. To my peers at home in Melbourne, my thanks to Dr. Corinna Box, Dr. Elena Benthaus, Dr. Athena Bellas, Dr. Naja Later, Dr. Jessica Balanzategui, Kim Clayton- Green, Dr. Anya Adair, Gabrielle Kristjanson, Tara Lomax, Sarah Richardson, Jemma Hefter, Dr. Stuart Richards, Felicity Ford, Luke van Ryn, Robbie Fordyce, and all those in the SCC and CCGC who have listened to me, encouraged me, and raised a glass (and sometimes many glasses) with me. You are superstars. Thank you to the Baillieu Library, especially the colleagues with whom I spent many hours shuffling books. I am grateful to the housemates who gave me endless patience and encouragement over many a chocolate pudding, glass of wine, and Austen adaptation, especially Lauren Mackenzie, Shivawn Stevens, Meredith Faragher, and Kirsten Wade. A iv special thanks also to dear friends and fabulous women Eleanor Bally, Claire Gawne, and Emma Capponi. I am indebted to the Very Revd. Dr. Andreas Loewe for his support and encouragement during my stay at the deanery, where he and Katherine were willing to share good books, good food, and a clever cat (the true necessities in life). To my amazing family: Mum, Dad, and Tori. Your love and support and your confidence in me made this (and everything else I do) possible. Thank you. Finally, to Nicholas Strole, my true partner in every way and the best person I know—thank you for always believing in me, supporting me, laughing with me, and for making every day better: thank you for everything. v Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i Declaration ................................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... iv 1. Introduction: The Development of Vampire Literature from 1990 to 2010 1 Reading the Vampire in the Twenty-First Century 1 A Brief History of the Development of the Vampire in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 6 Sympathetic Monsters: The Humanisation of the Vampire in the Later Twentieth Century 12 Vampires from 1990 to 2010 23 A Specific Focus on Adult North American Genre Fiction 28 Outline for the Thesis 30 PART ONE 2. The Ethics of the Abstinent Vampire in the 1980s: Contesting the Boundaries that Delimit Vampire, Human, Animal, and Race in Fevre Dream 37 Natural Vampires 37 The Vampire as Species: The Ethics of Predation 40 Reading the Animalised Vampire through the Discourse of Race 51 Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Contexts: Interconnection and American Empire 64 Looking Forward to the Vampires of the New Millennium 71 3. Defining Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance: Crossing the Boundaries of Genre, Media, Self, and Other in New Supernatural Worlds, 1985–2015 75 The Emergence of Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy 75 Problems in Defining UFPR: Competing Histories and Definitions 79 An Original Genre History of UFPR 86 A New Definition for Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance 93 Crossing Boundaries: UFPR as a Thematically Transgressive, Hybrid, and Transmedia Genre 96 A Marketable Format with Content That Resonates 103 4. “I Don’t Date Vampires. I Kill Them”: Blood/Lust as a Threat to the Post- /Feminist Vampire Slayer in the Early Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novels 107 Vampires, Feminism, and Feeding in the 1990s 107 The Emergence of the Post-/Feminist Female Vampire Slayer 108 Introducing Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter and Her “Everyday-Supernatural” World 115 The Desire to Feed as Morally Corrupting: Vampire Strippers and Junkies 122 Feeding as Consuming: Warner and the Question of Who Eats Whom 128 Refusing the Vampire Bite: From Vampire Slayer to Human Servant 132 The Supernatural Sexual Politics of Meat 137 Moving Toward Intersectional Solidarity with Vampires 142 PART TWO 5. The Vampire as Posthuman: A Theoretical Framework 147 Vampires in the Twenty-First Century: The Emergence of the Post-Apocalyptic Vampire Narrative 147 Posthumanism as a Critical and Contextual Framework 155 Cyborgs, Companion Species, and Significant Otherness: Reading the Vampire through the Posthuman Theory of Donna Haraway 159 Negative and Affirmative Readings of the Posthuman Vampire 166 6. Eating Well: Vampiric Feeding as Affirmative Posthuman Interconnection in the Later Anita Blake, Vampire
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