Introduction : Gothic Tides in the Oceanic South - Uncanny Contradictions and Compulsions single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 Introduction : Gothic Tides in the Oceanic South - Uncanny Contradictions and Compulsions
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'Maritime culture and literature are shot through with spectral, spookish, and supranatural motifs and narratives associated with Gothic traditions, and landed perspectives on the "alterity" and alienness of the ocean (Probyn, Eating) yield myriad imaginings of haunting, uncanny, and eldritch realms and beings that align with Gothic imaginaries. Yet as Emily Alder, in a special issue of Gothic Studies, has pointed out, these complex intersections between the Gothic, seas, and seafaring are largely unexplored, and "the main question is why they are so rarely examined" (1-2). Whereas Alder's selection represents the North Atlantic and Northern European "nautical" Gothic traditions, this multidisciplinary collection, Gothic in the Oceanic South, explores the rarely considered uncanniness of the oceans and waterways of the Southern Hemisphere, a haunted global precinct stretching across the Pacific, Southern, and Indian Oceans that Meg Samuelson and Charne Lavery define as "the oceanic South" and "hemispheric South" (Lavery and Samuelson; Samuelson and Lavery). They define the "oceanic South" as "a category that draws together the dispersed landmasses of the settler South, the decolonized and still colonized South, the 'sea of islands' comprising Indigenous Oceania, and the frozen continent of Antarctica" (38). Our project is to investigate the Gothic proclivities of these southern waters and oceans of this vast region, and it is also stimulated by Margaret Dolly's description of Oceania as defined by a "double vision" (532), between Oceanic and settler-colonial epistemologies. This frisson invites scrutiny of the regional myths and materialities, the colonising and decolonising effects of the uncanny and the sublime.' (Introduction) 
 

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    y separately published work icon Gothic in the Oceanic : South Maritime, Marine and Aquatic Uncanny in Southern Waters Allison Craven (editor), Diana Sandars (editor), London : Routledge , 2023 27374658 2023 anthology criticism

    'This dynamic multidisciplinary collection of essays examines the uncanny, eerie, wondrous, and dreaded dimensions of oceans, seas, waterways, and watery forms of the oceanic South, a haunted global precinct stretching across the Pacific, Southern and Indian Oceans, and around Australasia, Oceania, Aotearoa New Zealand, and South Africa.

    'Presenting work from leading scholars, the chapters contend with the contemporary fears and repressions associated with the return of environmental traumas, colonial traumas, and the spectres of the precolonial deep past that resurface in the present. The book examines the manifestations of these Gothic aesthetics and propensities across a range of watery spaces – seas, oceans, waterholes, and swamps – in vessels, ports, shorelines, journeys, strandings, and transformations, in amphibious bodies and the drowned, all of which promote haunted engagement with the materiality of water. This collection renews the interdisciplinary breadth of Gothic criticism and the relevance of Gothic affect and sensibility to understanding the histories and cultures of the oceanic South through an exploration of the rarely considered uncanniness of the oceans, waterways, and aqueous forms of the Southern Hemisphere, haunted by colonial and precolonial imaginings of the Antipodes, the legacies of imperialism, and the “double vision” between Oceanic and settler-colonial epistemologies, and the encroaching menace of climate change. Comprising diverse contributions from screen, literary, and cultural studies, environmental humanities, human geography, and creative practice in ecological sound art, and poetry, the collection examines the uncanny and the sublime in watery fictions and authentic settings of a range of aqueous southern forms – ocean surfaces and depths, haunted shallows and reefs, moist mangroves, moss and lichen, the awesome horror of tidal apocalypse.

    'This book will be illuminating reading for students and scholars of cultural studies, postcolonial studies, area studies, and Indigenous studies.' (Publication summary)

         London : Routledge , 2023
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Last amended 16 Jan 2024 10:00:16
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