Session 1: Love Will Keep Us Together…NOT!

2nd Global Conference

Monday 16th May – Wednesday 18th May 2011
Warsaw, Poland

“No More America?” Gothic Terminations in Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story
Geoff Hamilton
University of Toronto, Canada

This paper explores the contemporary status of seminal American mythologies of the self and the nation in Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story (2010). What the novel charts, I suggest, is the apocalyptic transformation of America from its originary status as a pastoral paradise – unprecedentedly free, new, and open –  to a gothic dystopia which so exaggerates these ideals as to reverse them. The focal point of my analysis is Josh “Joshie” Goldman, a sixty-something corporate executive who has physically rejuvenated himself through “dechronification treatments” and now preys vampirically on the young (and, in crafting his own survival amid the nation’s collapse, the increasingly senile ideology of young America). Of particular importance here, I contend, is the notion of contemporary America and the representative American self as corrupted by an (over-)emphasis on freedom (the power to indulge and feed desire by making and remaking the self through material consumption and display), newness (an utter indifference to the past and the binding power of tradition), and openness (a promiscuous receptivity to immediately alluring or overwhelming influences). My reading pays close attention to Shteyngart’s reworking of pastoral and gothic clichés – the simple shepherd, the vulnerable maiden, the vampire – and their relevance to American cultural decline. Goldman’s seduction of Eunice Park – the epitome of contemporary young (and senile) America – ultimately confirms the end, I suggest, of the American pastoral dream as well as its lingering ‘undeath.’

Love will Tear Us Apart … Again: The Endurance of the Orpheus and Eurydice Myth in Goth Subculture
Kathryn Franklin
York University, Department of Humanities, Toronto, Canada

In Classical Mythology: Images and Insights, Stephen L. Harris and Gloria Platzner astutely note: “Precisely because they have lasted so long, myths, in whatever form they have been transmitted, can be extremely useful tools for students of cultural history. For example, because so many myths continue to be adapted and reinterpreted, historians can study the various revisions as barometers of social change” (990). For centuries the story of Orpheus and Eurydice has been subject to interpretation and reinterpretation through the arts such as: opera, literature, theatre and film. In each retelling often different aspects of the narrative or points of view are emphasized; nevertheless the central motif of death remains a constant presence within the tale. While theses various treatments of the story have been constantly re-assessed and examined, few studies have researched the cultural implications of the myth, from the journey to the Underworld to the search for beauty and identity in the mortal world, within modern society.

Toward the end of the 1970s a group of morbidly flamboyant aesthetes emerged out of the socioeconomic depression and Thatcherite politics that was overtaking Britain. The goth subculture was immediately recognizable for its predilection toward anything associated with death, darkness and perverse sexuality. As many popular cultural theorists have pointed out, goths drew inspiration from Gothic literary traditions from vampires to ghostly apparitions, as well as looking to Celtic, Pagan, Egyptian and Christian mythology to complement their style of dress and comportment. While the goths’ liberal adoption of Western mythology and literature is essential to their identity as a subculture, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice itself is implicated in the broader representation of the subculture as a whole. Orpheus’ and Eurydice’s descent into and subsequently out of the Underworld is literally figured into their fashion, music and identity.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Much ink has been spilled about the Gothic and Postmodernism as such, but only slowly generic boundaries are dissolved and hybrid forms are acknowledged by critics. In this paper Nick Cave’s novel “And the Ass Saw the Angel” serves as example for the successful interplay of Gothic and Postmodernism. Stylistic and thematic features of nineteenth century Gothic and Southern Gothic are analysed and concepts of the Sublime and the Uncanny are applied to the novel. “And the Ass Saw the Angel” is also a postmodernist text, containing irony, collage and, most importantly, plurality which integrates Gothic features. Intertextual features and references are prominent, as the title of the novel is taken from a story from the Bible and thus, the novel gains a biblical subtext. As religion plays a vital role in many Gothic texts, there is again a similarity between both genres. Poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theories by Saussure, Derrida and Lacan are employed in order to show similarities between postmodern and Gothic narrative techniques, such as missing closures and instability of meaning, and in order to show how linguistic systems shape characters in Gothic and postmodern texts and how language functions as representative medium.

The goal of this study is to show that postmodernism should be regarded as dogma rather than a genre, as it can be manifested in manifold types of texts. Furthermore, the aim is to show how poststructuralist theories can be not only applied to different genres, but also to illustrate how they emphasise similarities between genres, resulting in generic hybridity.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)