Neoliberal gothic The Series’ Board of General Editors Elisabeth Bronfen, University of Zurich, Switzerland Steven Bruhm, University of Western Ontario, Canada Ken Gelder, University of Melbourne, Australia Jerrold Hogle, University of Arizona, USA (Chair) Avril Horner, Kingston University, UK William Hughes, Bath Spa University, UK The Editorial Advisory Board Glennis Byron, University of Stirling, Scotland Robert Miles, University of Victoria, Canada David Punter, University of Bristol, England Andrew Smith, University of Glamorgan, Wales Anne Williams, University of Georgia, USA Previously published Monstrous media/ spectral subjects: imaging gothic from the nineteenth century to the present Edited by Fred Botting and Catherine Spooner Globalgothic Edited by Glennis Byron EcoGothic Edited by Andrew Smith and William Hughes Neoliberal gothic International gothic in the neoliberal age Edited by Linnie Blake and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet Manchester University Press Copyright © Manchester University Press 2017 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing- in- Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 1 5261 1344 3 hardback First published 2017 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third- party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Out of House Publishing Linnie Blake would like to dedicate this book to her mother, Sheila Robinson – whose lifelong radicalism has never failed to inspire and motivate – and to Ella and Freya Blake who will carry all she has taught us into the future. Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet would like to dedicate it to Christian, for his full- spectrum home economics of nourishing conversation, moral support and loving companionship. Contents Notes on contributors page ix Series editors’ preface xii Acknowledgements xiv Introduction: neoliberal gothic 1 Linnie Blake and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet Part I: Neoliberal gothic monsters 1 Game of fangs: the vampire and neoliberal subjectivity 21 Aspasia Stephanou 2 Austerity bites: refiguring Dracula in a neoliberal age 38 Stéphanie Genz 3 Staging spectrality: capitalising (on) ghosts in German postdramatic theatre 56 Barry Murnane Part II: Biotechnologies, neoliberalism and the gothic 4 The return of the dismembered: representing organ trafficking in Asian cinemas 83 Katarzyna Ancuta viii Contents 5 Catastrophic events and queer northern villages: zombie pharmacology In the Flesh 104 Linnie Blake 6 Gothic vulnerability: affect and ethics in fiction from neoliberal South Africa 122 Rebecca Duncan Part III: The gothic home and neoliberalism 7 Market value: American Horror Story’s housing crisis 145 Karen E. Macfarlane 8 Haunted by the ghost: from global economics to domestic anxiety in contemporary art practice 161 Tracy Fahey Part IV: Crossing borders 9 Gothic meltdown: German nuclear cinema in neoliberal times 179 Steffen Hantke 10 Border gothic: Gregory Nava’s Bordertown and the dark side of NAFTA 200 Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet Index 215 Contributors Katarzyna Ancuta is a lecturer at Assumption University in Bangkok, Thailand. Her research interests oscillate around the interdiscipli- nary contexts of contemporary gothic/h orror, currently with a strong Asian focus. Her recent publications include contributions to A New Companion to the Gothic (2012), Global Gothic (2013) and The Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic (2014), as well as two co- edited special journal issues on Thai (2014) and Southeast Asian (2015) horror film. Linnie Blake is Principal Lecturer and Director of the Centre for Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and National Identity (Manchester University Press, 2008) and co- editor (with X. Aldana Reyes) of Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon (2015). She has also published on a variety of gothic topics in journals such as Gothic Studies, Horror Studies and Cultural Sociology. Rebecca Duncan completed her DAAD- funded doctorate at Giessen University (Germany) in 2015. She is the author of the forthcoming South African Gothic, and has published articles and book chapters on topics relating to postcolonial and South African textual cultures, the gothic and the speculative, and materialist ecocriticism. She cur- rently teaches in the Division of Languages and Literatures at Stirling University in Scotland.