Gothic Technologies
Abstract
This issue focuses on the relationship between Gothic fiction and technological innovation in contemporary culture from different perspectives and media formats. We explore how Gothic narratives have consistently engaged with, and responded to, technological developments—from the early anxieties about scientific discovery in 19th-century literature to contemporary fears surrounding digital media, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Our contributors examine how Gothic aesthetics have been transformed by new technologies while simultaneously providing a framework for articulating the uncanny dimension of technological advancement itself. The articles in this issue analyze how modern Gothic has evolved beyond traditional oppositions to embrace the fluid boundaries between human and non-human, natural and artificial. We investigate the “phosphorescent” aesthetic of contemporary visual Gothic with its colors and digital distortions, the viral nature of digital urban legends, and the haunted infrastructures of our networked existence. Through diverse case studies spanning literature, cinema, television, and digital storytelling, to podcasts, this issue maps the spectral territories where technology and Gothic sensibilities converge, showing how today’s Gothic is fundamentally shaped by the technological structures and virtual realities that define contemporary experience.
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