Introduction:Postfeminist Gothic
摘要
This collection of essays addresses and examines the intersection of two much-debated and controversial concepts: postfeminism and Gothic. The resulting category of “postfeminist Gothic” 1 demarcates a new space for critical enquiry that re-invigorates previous debates on the Gothic, in particular the notion of the Female Gothic and its relation to second-wave feminism, as well as shedding light on the contemporary postfeminist conundrum. That this will not be a straightforward companionship or symbiosis is made explicit by the evasiveness and multiplicity of meaning exhibited by both terms: the Gothic has always resisted a monological definition and exceeded the laws of genre and categorical thinking, being as Fred Botting notes “an inscription neither of darkness nor of light, a delineation neither of reason and morality nor of superstition and corruption, neither good nor evil, but both at the same time” (9), and prefixing it with the equally polysemic “postfeminist” seems to complicate matters even further. Rather than putting forward a definite and singular signification of Gothic, postfeminism and by extension postfeminist Gothic, the following essays uncover and raise a new set of questions involved in this critical positioning: What does it mean to “post” feminism? These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.