Skip to main content

The New Urban Gothic: Introduction

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The New Urban Gothic

Part of the book series: Palgrave Gothic ((PAGO))

  • 931 Accesses

Abstract

The book opens with a discussion of how the global economic systems of the neoliberal period have exploited our monstrous desires, power, greed and inequalities to such a degree as to have wreaked unrepairable and irreversible damage on our planet. Issues of toxicity, the flows and breaks in urban life, what constitutes inclusion or exclusion, residue and hauntings and precarious urbanities have now all found a way into our Gothic fictions. Examining representations across many different media forms, this introduction to The New Urban Gothic introduces the reader to how our dystopic and grotesque imaginings use the episteme of the Anthropocene to critique the darker side of our sociocultural experience. A particular focus of this introduction is the role of the post-human in this discourse and how anti-landscapes–and anxieties over those anti-landscapes—signal the unsustainability of our human communities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Agamben, Giorgio. 1993. The Coming Community, trans. Michael Hardt. Minneapolis, MN: Univeristy of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Archer, David. 2009. The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Zygmunt. 2012. Culture in a Liquid Modern World. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. 1994. Reflexive Modernization: Politics Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, Walter. 1969. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bouton, Christophe. 2016. The Critical Theory of History: Rethinking the Philosophy of History, in the Light of Koselleck’s Work. In History and Theory 55: 2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2018. The Seventh History and Theory Lecture: Anthropocene Time. In History and Theory 57, no. 1 (March): 5–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clover, Carol. 1992. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crang, Mike. 1998. Cultral Geography, ed. David Bell and Stephen Wynn Williams. The Routledge Companion to Human Geography. Oxon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glikson, Andrew, and Colin Groves. 2016. Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene. Cham: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, David. 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horsley, Lee. 2005. Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, J.B. 1984. Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, Fredric. 2013. Antinomies of Realism. London and New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, Henry. 2009. Transmedia Storytelling. In Volume 19: 56–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 1991/1974. The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luckhurst, Roger. 2002. The Contemporary London Gothic and the Limits of the “Spectral Turn”. Textual Practice 16 (3): 527–546.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mighall, Robert. 2007. Gothic Cities. In The Routledge Companion to Gothic, ed. Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy, 54–62. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, Jason. 2015. Capitalism and the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2000. Being Singular Plural. trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nixon, Ron. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nye, David E., and Sarah Elkind. 2014. The Anti-Landscape. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rebellion.earth. Accessed 3 December 2019.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reznick, David N. 2010. The Origin: Then and Now: An Interpretive Guide to the Origin of the Species. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warwick, Alexandra. 1999. Lost Cities: London’s Apocalypse. In Spectral Readings: Towards a Gothic Geography, ed. Glennis Byron and David Punter, 73–87. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wasson, Sara. 2010. Urban Gothic of the Second World War: Dark London. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • World Health Organisation. https://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/en/. Accessed 3 December 2019.

  • Zalasiewicz, Jan. 2017. The Extraordinary Strata of the Anthropocen. In Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Athropocene, ed. S. Oppermann and S. Iovino. London: Rowman and Littlefield International.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Holly-Gale Millette .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Millette, HG. (2020). The New Urban Gothic: Introduction. In: Millette, HG., Heholt, R. (eds) The New Urban Gothic. Palgrave Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43777-0_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics