Postface: Suspended Failures

Abstract

Throughout this book, the main objective has been to argue how studying the experience of horror from the aspect of words and images in literature can give rise to significant claims. First of all, I hope to have shown that horror is by no means limited to the stock features of a certain genre or subculture, and that it is a big mistake to preclude horror from the field of theoretically complex phenomena. One fellow academic that I conversed with during the project was prone to this very error when he declared that I should immediately drop the horror element and strictly focus on the experience part instead. It appears that in and about horror there lingers that air of the ‘disturbing, distasteful or even downright unacceptable’¹ noted by Ken Gelder, which makes it difficult or unbearable for many either to take seriously or see beyond their own reaction. Of course, in the latter response, one can also go wrong in becoming overprotective of what one understands and values as ‘true’ horror — like genre aficionados often do — at which point the overall intricacy and universal potential of the phenomenon has been compromised. Speaking in support of something begins to wither its object by severing it from the theoretical environment. As it occurs, horror is not only related to the sublime, primal or nonsensical, it also requires the rational, lucid and cerebral. As aesthetic experience, it takes place where the dimensions meet.