'The Gothic is undergoing a pronounced resurgence in academic and popular cultures. Propelled by fears associated with massive social transformations produced by globalisation, the neoliberal order and environmental uncertainty – tropes of the Gothic resonate. The gothic allows us to delve into the unknown, the liminal, the unseen; into hidden histories and feelings. It calls up unspoken truths and secret desires.
'In the tropics, the gothic manifests in specific ways according to spaces, places, cultures and their encounters. Within the fraught geographies and histories of colonisation and aggression that have been especially acute across the tropical regions of the world, the tropical gothic engages with orientalism and postcolonialism. The tropics, as the region of the greatest biodiversity in the world, is under enormous stress, hence tropical gothic also engages with gothic ecocriticism, senses of space, landscape and place. Globalisation and neoliberalism likewise impact the tropics, and the gothic imagery of these ‘vampiric’ capitalist forces – which impinge upon the livelihoods, traditions and the very survival of peoples of the tropics – is explored through urban gothic, popular culture, posthumanism and queer theory.
'As the papers in this special issue demonstrate, a gothic sensibility enables humans to respond to the seemingly dark, nebulous forces that threaten existence. These papers engage with specific instances of Tropical Gothic in West Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Southeast Asia, northern Australia, and the American Deep South.' (Editorial abstract)
Contents indexed selectively. Other material in this issue includes:
Gothic "Voodoo" in Africa and Haiti Eric James Montgomery
Gothic Resistances: Flesh, Bones, Ghosts and Time in Vietnamese Postwar Fiction John Armstrong
The Tropical Gothic and Beyond: El Grupo de Cali’s Legacies for Contemporary Latin American Literature, Cinema, and Culture Felipe Gómez G.
Love, death and laughter in the city of different angels: S.P. Somtow’s Bangkok Gothic Katarzyna Ancuta
Subtropical Gothic: New Orleans and Posthuman Supernaturals in The Originals Verena Bernardi
Hidden Voices and Gothic Undertones: Slavery and Folklore of the American South Jennifer Dos Reis Dos Santos
“The ugliness of my surroundings”: Tip Marugg’s Ecogothic Poetics of Isolation Daniel Arbino
Ruins of Empire: Decolonial Queer Ecologies in Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven Gregory Luke Chwala
The Haunting Letter: Presence, Absence, and Writing in Sab Emmy Herland
'South East Queensland’s subtropical hinterlands—the mountainous, forested country lying between the cities of the coast and the Great Dividing Range—are sites of a regional variation of Australian Gothic. Hinterland Gothic draws its atmosphere and metaphors from the specificities of regional landscapes, climate, and histories.
'In works by Eleanor Dark, Judith Wright, Janette Turner Hospital, and Inga Simpson, South East Queensland’s Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast hinterlands are represented as Gothic regions “beyond the visible and known” (“Hinterland” in Oxford Dictionaries Online 2019), where the subtropical climate gives rise to an unruly, excessive nature.
'In Gothic literature, excess is related to the unspeakable or the repressed. Bringing Gothic, postcolonial, and ecocritical perspectives to bear on the literature of South East Queensland’s hinterlands reveals a preoccupation with the regions’ repressed histories of colonial violence, which are written on the landscape through Gothic metaphors.' (Publication abstract)
'The field of Gothic Studies concentrates almost exclusively on literature, cinema and popular culture. While Gothic themes in the visual arts of the Romantic period are well documented, and there is sporadic discussion about the re-emergence of the Gothic in contemporary visual arts, there is little to be found that addresses the Gothic in northern or tropical Australia. A broad review of largely European visual arts in tropical Australia reveals that Gothic themes and motifs tend to centre on aspects of the landscape. During Australia’s early colonial period, the northern landscape is portrayed as a place of uncanny astonishment. An Australian Tropical Gothic re-appears for early modernists as a desolate landscape that embodies a mythology of peril, tragedy and despair. Finally, for a new wave of contemporary artists, including some significant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, Gothic motifs emerge to animate tropical landscapes and draw attention to issues of environmental degradation and the dispossession of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.' (Publication abstract)
