Introduction: A Genreless Horror
Horror has historically been mired in the conceptual swamp of negative affect. Because its basal meaning refers to ‘a painful emotion compounded of loathing and fear’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2007), the term has produced a circular scholarship that approaches its definition through spectator, vie...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Sage Publications
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100974 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6631-2865 |
| _version_ | 1826189904082632704 |
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| author | Brinkema, Eugenie Alexandra |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Brinkema, Eugenie Alexandra |
| author_sort | Brinkema, Eugenie Alexandra |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Horror has historically been mired in the conceptual swamp of negative affect. Because its basal meaning refers to ‘a painful emotion compounded of loathing and fear’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2007), the term has produced a circular scholarship that approaches its definition through spectator, viewer, user, and player feeling, finding therein only what the generic stamp has already proclaimed. As in Linda Williams’s (1991) taxonomy of ‘body genres’, horror is presupposed to be that genre that disturbs and moves the body in thrilling, disgusting ways, and the broader generic implication has been the durable but quasi-tautological sense that ‘horror’ connotes the ways in which various texts inspire such reactions. Accordingly, visual and media studies have largely either focused on the tropes, themes, and things taken to prompt that affective result (e.g. monsters, assailants, terrible places); traced the permutations of such tropes, themes, and things (as a history of elements); or made broad claims for the significance of a genre thusly centered on the elicitation of negative affect – a glossed version of Althusser’s notion of ‘expressive causality’ (Althusser and Balibar, 2009 [1970]), which he attributes to Hegel, in which narrative productions are the phenomenal expressions of cultural essences. (Ideological, psychoanalytic, and cultural studies approaches to horror as the return of [the, some, any] repressed share at least some of this impulse.) This generic approach to horror studies – with its praxis of adjudicating inclusions (and tracing exclusions), taxonomizing rules for membership, and articulating a set of expectations so tenacious that they are secured precisely through departure, self-conscious violation, and postmodern knowingness – has dominated the field for 30 years. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:28:47Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/100974 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:28:47Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Sage Publications |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1009742022-09-23T12:44:12Z Introduction: A Genreless Horror Brinkema, Eugenie Alexandra Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Literature Section Brinkema, Eugenie Alexandra Brinkema, Eugenie Alexandra Horror has historically been mired in the conceptual swamp of negative affect. Because its basal meaning refers to ‘a painful emotion compounded of loathing and fear’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2007), the term has produced a circular scholarship that approaches its definition through spectator, viewer, user, and player feeling, finding therein only what the generic stamp has already proclaimed. As in Linda Williams’s (1991) taxonomy of ‘body genres’, horror is presupposed to be that genre that disturbs and moves the body in thrilling, disgusting ways, and the broader generic implication has been the durable but quasi-tautological sense that ‘horror’ connotes the ways in which various texts inspire such reactions. Accordingly, visual and media studies have largely either focused on the tropes, themes, and things taken to prompt that affective result (e.g. monsters, assailants, terrible places); traced the permutations of such tropes, themes, and things (as a history of elements); or made broad claims for the significance of a genre thusly centered on the elicitation of negative affect – a glossed version of Althusser’s notion of ‘expressive causality’ (Althusser and Balibar, 2009 [1970]), which he attributes to Hegel, in which narrative productions are the phenomenal expressions of cultural essences. (Ideological, psychoanalytic, and cultural studies approaches to horror as the return of [the, some, any] repressed share at least some of this impulse.) This generic approach to horror studies – with its praxis of adjudicating inclusions (and tracing exclusions), taxonomizing rules for membership, and articulating a set of expectations so tenacious that they are secured precisely through departure, self-conscious violation, and postmodern knowingness – has dominated the field for 30 years. 2016-01-25T16:06:18Z 2016-01-25T16:06:18Z 2015-12 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1470-4129 1741-2994 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100974 Brinkema, E. “Introduction: A Genreless Horror.” Journal of Visual Culture 14, no. 3 (December 1, 2015): 263–266. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6631-2865 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470412915607922 Journal of Visual Culture Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Sage Publications Brinkema |
| spellingShingle | Brinkema, Eugenie Alexandra Introduction: A Genreless Horror |
| title | Introduction: A Genreless Horror |
| title_full | Introduction: A Genreless Horror |
| title_fullStr | Introduction: A Genreless Horror |
| title_full_unstemmed | Introduction: A Genreless Horror |
| title_short | Introduction: A Genreless Horror |
| title_sort | introduction a genreless horror |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100974 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6631-2865 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT brinkemaeugeniealexandra introductionagenrelesshorror |