The Gothic and the Fantastic in the Age of Digital Reproduction Anne Quéma Acadia University

The Gothic and the Fantastic in the Age of Digital Reproduction Anne Quéma Acadia University to categorize artistic produc- Wtions, or we may pause and refl ect on the diffi culty of defi ning genres such as the Gothic and the fantastic. An examination of the critical discourse on the fantastic elaborated by critics such as Todorov, Jackson, and Monleón indicates that the defi nitions of the fantastic and the Gothic—however masterful or tentative—overlap to a considerable degree. In the fi rst section of this article, I will analyze the similarities between the two critical discourses with the view of proposing a means of distinguishing between the fantastic and the Gothic. While both genres interrogate epistemologi- cal and ontological norms governing mimetic representation, the Gothic stands out by drawing upon a rhetoric of the uncanny which perverts mimesis and creates terror and disorientation in the reader. is rhetoric of aff ect is what distinguishes the Gothic from the fantastic. In the second section, applying this theoretical distinction to visual art, I will consider some of H. R. Giger’s pictures which rest on a tension between the Gothic and the fantastic. I will demonstrate that this generic hybridism constitutes the visual vocabulary of Giger’s critique of the discourse of sexuality and sexual reproduction in the s and s. I will conclude by examining ESC .. (December(December ):): -- the extent and limits of cultural subversion in Giger’s visual art and the Gothic genre. A Q teaches e act of defi ning the Gothic seems to function like a critical irritant, at Acadia University. and the attendant discursive discomfort may indicate that the very notion A specialist in theory of genre belongs to an Aristotelian tradition that has been eroded by post- and twentieth-century structuralist tales of textual indeterminacy. Although critics such as Avril British literature, she has Horner and Sue Zlosnik do take the Gothic bull by the horns by claiming published e Agon of that “Gothic writing always concerns itself with boundaries and their insta- Modernism: Wyndham bilities” (), others adopt an oxymoronic discourse that supports the Lewis’s Allegories, notion that the Gothic is not a stable genre whose recurrent features can Aesthetics, and Politics nevertheless be enumerated. us, Jerrold Hogle begins his introduction to (Bucknell University e Cambridge Companion to the Gothic with the following defi ant asser- Press, ) as well as tion: “Gothic fi ction is hardly ‘Gothic’ at all” (, ), but later proceeds to articles in e Canadian identify its “general parameters” (). In his analysis of the Gothic, Botting Modernists Meet, Studies singles out excess and transgression as recurrent features of a genre he is in Canadian Literature, in other respects reluctant to defi ne. Choosing a term that recurs in other Philosophy and Literature, critical analyses to designate the elusive genre of the Gothic, he states: West Coast Line, and “changing features, emphases and meanings disclose Gothic writing as a Gothic Studies. e mode (my emphasis) that exceeds genre and categories, restricted neither recipient of a to a literary school nor to a historical period” (, ). Both Hogle and research grant, she is Botting underline the fact that in the Gothic we are dealing with a type of currently working on a text that undoes neat typologies and literary genealogies. Why persist then project on contemporary in establishing generic boundaries if the very function of the Gothic text is Gothic fi ction and to blur boundaries? It could be counter-argued that there is no necessary English family law. contradiction between the fact that narratives are concerned with indeterminacy and the decision to identify the recurrence of this indeterminacy as the index of a genre. e plot thickens when, despite the futility of the exercise, we succumb to the temptation of comparing defi nitions of the fantastic and the Gothic. e major problem one faces in this process of comparison is that critics do not draw any clear distinction between the two genres. In fact, the question as to whether the fantastic and the Gothic are two distinct genres is never raised. In e Fantastic (), Todorov states: In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without sylphides, or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. e person who experiences the event must opt for one of the two possible solutions: either he is the victim of an illusion of the senses, of a product of the imagination—and laws of the world then remain what they are; or else the event has indeed | Quéma | taken place, it is an integral part of reality—but then this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us. Either the devil is an illusion, an imaginary being; or else he exists, precisely like other living beings—with this reservation, that we encounter him infrequently. e fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighbouring genre, the uncanny or the marvellous. e fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event. () It is on the basis of this defi nition that Todorov analyzes the Gothic: “we generally distinguish, within the literary Gothic, two tendencies: that of the supernatural explained (the ‘uncanny’), as it appears in the novels of Clara Reeves and Ann Radcliff e; and that of the supernatural accepted (the ‘marvellous’), which is characteristic of the works of Horace Walpole, M. G. Lewis, and Maturin” (). In both tendencies, the fantastic in its pure form does not exist because it is eventually rationalized, or because it remains beyond rationalization. is analysis produces a curious problem. While it clearly indicates that the Gothic is not the fantastic, it also defi nes the Gothic according to categories that determine the fantastic. In addition, it can be argued that the presence of the supernatural is not a condition of the Gothic text. Although historically Gothic narratives have resorted to devices such as ghosts, apparitions, and hallucinations, the violation of natural laws (physiological, perceptual, and ideological) does not necessarily lead into the supernatural.¹ J. G. Ballard’s Gothic Crash () certainly defi es what culture might regard as natural laws, but has no truck with the supernatural, let alone the marvellous. Instead, it lands the reader and viewer in the cul-de-sac of alienation and abjection. Conversely, not all fantastic texts are Gothic: fairy tales or the Arabian Nights deal in the supernatural but do not necessarily evince Gothic horror.² Aguirre makes a similar point when he proposes to distinguish between the numinous and the supernatural: “ e Gothic novel is not primarily about supernatural but about numinous events. If by ‘numinous’ is understood the quality of that which transcends—and opposes—the rational, it is immaterial whether these events arise from outside sources, from nature or from the human mind” (). Aguirre uses the word numinous “to signify not the merely supernatural but that which the world of horror fi ction systematically defi nes as non-human, as alien, as Other: that which we are not” (). However, Lucie Armitt argues that with their ogres and child-devouring witches, fairy tales share with the Gothic confrontations with the uncanny (). | e Gothic and the Fantastic | In identifying the thematic properties of the fantastic, Todorov singles out two phenomenological features. e fantastic concerns the self in its relation to the world when the deletion of boundaries between subject and object, animate and inanimate occurs: “the transition from mind to matter has become possible” (). ere is little distinction between this defi n- ing criterion of the fantastic and the recurrently discussed parameters of Gothic narrative. Consider, for instance, Hogle’s statement that “the Gothic is … continuously about confrontations between the low and the high.… [I]t is about its own blurring of diff erent levels of discourse while it is also concerned with the interpenetration of other opposed conditions—includ- ing life/death, natural/supernatural, ancient/modern, realistic/artifi cial, and unconscious/conscious—along with the abjection of these crossings into haunting and supposedly deviant ‘others’ that therefore attract and terrify middle-class characters and readers” (). In both cases, the fantastic and the Gothic are declared to delete boundaries between categories. Todo- rov also argues that the fantastic concerns the self in its relation to others, more specifi cally, “the relation of man with his desire—and thereby with his unconscious” (). Similarly, Botting argues that, in the Gothic, excess and “the fascination with transgression and the anxiety over cultural limits and boundaries, continue to produce ambivalent emotions and meanings in their tales of darkness, desire and power” (, ). As a matter of fact, Todorov goes on to select the transgression of the law as the narrative and social pointer of the fantastic: the irruption of the fantastic sets into motion a narrative that contests the social and political rule of the law (Todorov , ). One can observe the same generic blurring in Rosemary Jackson’s Fan- tasy (). Jackson adds to the generic conundrum by not distinguishing between fantasy and the fantastic, as her use of the two terms is undiff er- entiated throughout her study.

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