Cfp Between XV.29 (May 2025). “Gothic Technologies”

2024-03-26

Edited by Anna Chiara Corradino (University of Potsdam), Massimo Fusillo (Scuola Normale Superiore), Marco Malvestio (University of Padua)

Submission deadline: [September 30, 2024] *** extended to: 2024-10-22 (Tuesday)
Publication date: May 30, 2025

Historically, there has been a profound connection between the Gothic and technology: first, because of the Gothic’s ability to theorize its risks and ambiguities (as in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s seminal Frankenstein, 1818); and second, because it is through up-to-date technological solutions that the Gothic began to populate the stage, initially in the form of dramas (as in Matthew Lewis’s The Castle Spectre, 1797) and later in popular shows like phantasmagorias. Moreover, the emergence of new communication technologies, such as the telegraph, the radio, and the telephone, is strictly tied to the development of spiritualism, and thus to contemporary manifestations of the ghost story genre.

In more recent years, this interaction between Gothic forms and technological development has persisted, and it could even be argued that the Gothic mode (here understood as the form of the return of the repressed, but also of the excess and the abject) serves as a primary tool to reflect on a world in which mechanical and digital technologies play an increasingly important role in everyday life. The Gothic (as well as speculative genres like horror and the weird) consistently ponders the inherently spectral dimension of contemporary medial landscapes, imbued with nostalgia and filtered through the ghosts of post-digital hyperreality; technological hybridizations involving the biological body; artificial intelligence’s potential for measuring the borders of the human; and the intersections between the climate crisis, anthropocentrism, and non-human agencies.

The Gothic thus presents itself as a complex phenomenon wherein technological innovations are not simply the subject of narration, but rather shape the structure and the narrative core of contemporary virtual realities. In “phosphorescent” contemporary times, the Gothic expresses itself not only through the usual poetics of the obscure and the abject, but also by means of a visual aesthetics strongly marked by bright colors, neon lights, and surreal effects (as in the recent case of Poor Things, 2024)—all elements that contribute to creating a new sensibility merging traditional Gothic tropes and the contemporary digital world.

The haunted televisions of Poltergeist (1982) and Ringu (1998), the iconotexts of House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (2000), the online diffusion of creepypasta like Slender Man, the artificial intelligences of Ex Machina (2014), the bio-technological grafts of Crimes of the Future (2022), the cyberpunk virtual ghosts of Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and the landscapes of ruins of the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer (2014) and The Last of Us (2023), despite their differences, take part in the same aesthetic dynamic, whereby the tropes of the Gothic are used to complicate and make evident the complexity of present-day technology.

This special issue aims to explore the ways in which, in contemporary imagery, the Gothic has represented the traumas of technological developments as well as its spectral dimensions. Contributions focusing on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary and visual products (art, movies, television, videogames) are welcomed, as well as inquiries into other media (music, podcasts, etc.). Specifically, we encourage proposals relating to:

  • Thematizations of technology in the Gothic;
  • Spectral media (television, internet, social media);
  • The Gothic and Posthumanism;
  • The Gothic Anthropocene;
  • Gothic uses of color;
  • Neon aesthetics in the Gothic;
  • Present-day phantasmagorias and Galvanism;
  • Gothic representations of technological traumas;
  • The Gothic and new forms of digital narratives;
  • The Gothic and immersive art;
  • Gothic portrayals of artificial intelligence;
  • AI-generated Gothic texts or images;
  • Videogames and the Gothic.

This issue is edited by Anna Chiara Corradino (annachiara.corradino1@gmail.com), Massimo Fusillo (massimo.fusillo@sns.it), and Marco Malvestio (marco.malvestio@unipd.it).

Articles ready for publication (no longer than 40,000 characters, including spaces, paginated on the provided Template, along with a title, an abstract, and metadata in English) must be sent to the journal by September 30, 2024, following the instructions available on the Submissions page of Between’s website. Accepted articles will be published on May 30, 2025.

Submissions are accepted in Italian, English, and French; bilingual submissions will also be accepted. Submissions in a language other than Italian and bilingual submissions (with one language being English or French) are appreciated and encouraged, especially for papers relating to foreign authors.

Essential bibliography:

Aldana Reyes, X. (2014). Body Gothic. Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horror Film. University of Wales Press · Beville, M. (2009). Gothic-postmodernism: Voicing the Terrors of Postmodernity. Brill · Blake, L., and Aldana Reyes, X. (eds.) (2016). Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. Tauris · Botting, F. (2008). Limits of Horror. Technology, Bodies, Gothic. Manchester University Press · Castle, T. (1988). Phantasmagoria: Spectral Technology and the Metaphorics of Modern Reverie. Critical Inquiry, 15 (1), pp. 26–61 · Coeckelbergh, M. (2017). New Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine. MIT Press · Davies E. (2015). TechGnosis. Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information. North Atlantic Books · Del Pilar Blanco, M., and Peeren, E. (eds.) (2013). The Spectralities Reader. Ghosts and Hauntings in Contemporary Cultural Theory. Bloomsbury · Derrida, J. (1993). Spectres de Marx: l’état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale. Éditions Galileé · Edwards, J. D. (eds.) (2015). Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture. Technogothics. Routledge · Edwards, J. D., Graulund, R., and Höglund, J. (eds.) (2023). Dark Scenes from a Damaged Heart. The Gothic Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press · Fisher, M. (2014). Ghosts of My Life: Writings of Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures. Zero Books · Jones, D. J. (2011). Gothic Machine: Textualities, Pre-Cinematic Media and Film in Popular Visual Culture, 1670–1910. University of Wales Press · Kirkland, E. (2021). Videogames and the Gothic. Routledge · Pop, D. (2019). A Replicant Walks into the Desert of the Real and Tells Unfunny Jokes in the Flickering Lights of Neon-Gothic Fantasy. Caietele Echinox, 35, pp. 190–211 · Puglia, E., Fusillo, M., Lazzarin, S., and Mangini, A. M. (eds.) (2018). Ritorni spettrali. Storie e teorie della spettralità senza fantasmi. il Mulino · Sconce, J. (2000). Haunted Media. Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Duke University Press · Scotti, M. (2013). Storia degli spettri. Feltrinelli · Tanner, G. (2016). Babbling Corpse. Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. Zero Books · Tanni, V. (2023). Exit reality. Vaporwave, backrooms, weirdcore e altri paesaggi oltre la soglia. Not · Van Elferen, I. (2014). Techno-Gothics of the Early-twenty-first Century. In Hogle, J. E. (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Modern Gothic. Cambridge University Press, pp. 138–154 · Weinstock, J. A. (2023). Gothic Things. Dark Enchantment and Anthropocene Anxiety. Fordham University Press.