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This article examines Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), a gothic novel that augments its postmodernist credentials by preemptively imagining and representing the theoretical gaze that would otherwise have been directed on itself. The article suggests that despite the novel’s intense performance of self-reflexivity, it demonstrates a traumatic suppression of its own immediate historical conditions, particularly its temporal proximity to the events of the First Gulf War. This article thus reads the text’s telling silences and its thematization of uncanny spatial violations as indexing a minimally acknowledged guilt over the war in Iraq. The novel’s slippages in self-awareness not only point to an avoidance of its own scotomized history but also foreground the shifting boundaries and dispersed locations of textual self-consciousness. © 2021 Regents of the University of Colorado

Scholars of J. H. Prynne have so far offered no context or clarification for the dedication for Kazoo Dreamboats; or, On What There Is (2011). The dedication reads: ‘FOR THE JINLING PATRIOTS’.1 The rare dedicatory notes in Prynne’s formidable corpus tend to allude in the usual manner to friends and poetic influences—Charles Olson, Peter Riley, and Ed Dorn, for instance—though many of these dedications disappeared when the original chapbooks entered the larger collections (all titled Poems) that established Prynne’s reputation beyond the Cambridge poetry scene. The dedication to ‘the Jinling Patriots’ is therefore unusually obscure in its meaning and relevance. We present two distinct but related readings the dedication: the first is based on an episode from nineteenth-century Chinese history, and the second draws upon archival evidence from the Papers of J. H. Prynne recently opened to the public by the Cambridge University Library.

This article examines Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), a gothic novel that augments its postmodernist credentials by preemptively imagining and representing the theoretical gaze that would otherwise have been directed on itself. The article suggests that despite the novel’s intense performance of self-reflexivity, it demonstrates a traumatic suppression of its own immediate historical conditions, particularly its temporal proximity to the events of the First Gulf War. This article thus reads the text’s telling silences and its thematization of uncanny spatial violations as indexing a minimally acknowledged guilt over the war in Iraq. The novel’s slippages in self-awareness not only point to an avoidance of its own scotomized history but also foreground the shifting boundaries and dispersed locations of textual self-consciousness. © 2021 Regents of the University of Colorado

Scholars of J. H. Prynne have so far offered no context or clarification for the dedication for Kazoo Dreamboats; or, On What There Is (2011). The dedication reads: ‘FOR THE JINLING PATRIOTS’.1 The rare dedicatory notes in Prynne’s formidable corpus tend to allude in the usual manner to friends and poetic influences—Charles Olson, Peter Riley, and Ed Dorn, for instance—though many of these dedications disappeared when the original chapbooks entered the larger collections (all titled Poems) that established Prynne’s reputation beyond the Cambridge poetry scene. The dedication to ‘the Jinling Patriots’ is therefore unusually obscure in its meaning and relevance. We present two distinct but related readings the dedication: the first is based on an episode from nineteenth-century Chinese history, and the second draws upon archival evidence from the Papers of J. H. Prynne recently opened to the public by the Cambridge University Library.

This article examines Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), a gothic novel that augments its postmodernist credentials by preemptively imagining and representing the theoretical gaze that would otherwise have been directed on itself. The article suggests that despite the novel’s intense performance of self-reflexivity, it demonstrates a traumatic suppression of its own immediate historical conditions, particularly its temporal proximity to the events of the First Gulf War. This article thus reads the text’s telling silences and its thematization of uncanny spatial violations as indexing a minimally acknowledged guilt over the war in Iraq. The novel’s slippages in self-awareness not only point to an avoidance of its own scotomized history but also foreground the shifting boundaries and dispersed locations of textual self-consciousness. © 2021 Regents of the University of Colorado

Scholars of J. H. Prynne have so far offered no context or clarification for the dedication for Kazoo Dreamboats; or, On What There Is (2011). The dedication reads: ‘FOR THE JINLING PATRIOTS’.1 The rare dedicatory notes in Prynne’s formidable corpus tend to allude in the usual manner to friends and poetic influences—Charles Olson, Peter Riley, and Ed Dorn, for instance—though many of these dedications disappeared when the original chapbooks entered the larger collections (all titled Poems) that established Prynne’s reputation beyond the Cambridge poetry scene. The dedication to ‘the Jinling Patriots’ is therefore unusually obscure in its meaning and relevance. We present two distinct but related readings the dedication: the first is based on an episode from nineteenth-century Chinese history, and the second draws upon archival evidence from the Papers of J. H. Prynne recently opened to the public by the Cambridge University Library.

Scholars of J. H. Prynne have so far offered no context or clarification for the dedication for Kazoo Dreamboats; or, On What There Is (2011). The dedication reads: ‘FOR THE JINLING PATRIOTS’.1 The rare dedicatory notes in Prynne’s formidable corpus tend to allude in the usual manner to friends and poetic influences—Charles Olson, Peter Riley, and Ed Dorn, for instance—though many of these dedications disappeared when the original chapbooks entered the larger collections (all titled Poems) that established Prynne’s reputation beyond the Cambridge poetry scene. The dedication to ‘the Jinling Patriots’ is therefore unusually obscure in its meaning and relevance. We present two distinct but related readings the dedication: the first is based on an episode from nineteenth-century Chinese history, and the second draws upon archival evidence from the Papers of J. H. Prynne recently opened to the public by the Cambridge University Library.

This article examines Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), a gothic novel that augments its postmodernist credentials by preemptively imagining and representing the theoretical gaze that would otherwise have been directed on itself. The article suggests that despite the novel’s intense performance of self-reflexivity, it demonstrates a traumatic suppression of its own immediate historical conditions, particularly its temporal proximity to the events of the First Gulf War. This article thus reads the text’s telling silences and its thematization of uncanny spatial violations as indexing a minimally acknowledged guilt over the war in Iraq. The novel’s slippages in self-awareness not only point to an avoidance of its own scotomized history but also foreground the shifting boundaries and dispersed locations of textual self-consciousness. © 2021 Regents of the University of Colorado

Through the works of J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and, Mark Z. Danielewski, this dissertation maps key postmodern contexts that reinvent the Gothic tradition. Texts such as Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962) and Crash (1973), Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972), and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) take familiar Gothic themes into a fundamentally postmodern arena marked by the terrifying dominance of technology and mass media, increasingly alien urban spaces, and violent neo-imperialist adventures. The novels of Carter, Ballard, and Danielewski present distinct filtrations of the massive changes within Britain and America in a post-war context. While Ballard’s own experiences as a child of the Second World War and his intense sense of disengagement with large-scale environmental changes result in a tepid, strained, and deeply ironized response to technology and modernization in the late-twentieth century, Carter provides a quintessentially postmodern narrative that offers a unique, if contentious, feminist response to the technologized world of the ’60s and the’70s. Danielewski’s work formally represents an enthusiastic embrace of the possibilities of Postmodernism and the technology of new-media as a creative mine for spatialized horror, while simultaneously succumbing to the temptation of sentimentality at the cost of genuinely addressing its historical context. This dissertation proposes that in each of these texts, the concepts of the mechanical and the technological constitute the central problematic through which postmodern Gothic horror seeks to comprehend itself.

Through the works of J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and, Mark Z. Danielewski, this dissertation maps key postmodern contexts that reinvent the Gothic tradition. Texts such as Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962) and Crash (1973), Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972), and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) take familiar Gothic themes into a fundamentally postmodern arena marked by the terrifying dominance of technology and mass media, increasingly alien urban spaces, and violent neo-imperialist adventures. The novels of Carter, Ballard, and Danielewski present distinct filtrations of the massive changes within Britain and America in a post-war context. While Ballard’s own experiences as a child of the Second World War and his intense sense of disengagement with large-scale environmental changes result in a tepid, strained, and deeply ironized response to technology and modernization in the late-twentieth century, Carter provides a quintessentially postmodern narrative that offers a unique, if contentious, feminist response to the technologized world of the ’60s and the’70s. Danielewski’s work formally represents an enthusiastic embrace of the possibilities of Postmodernism and the technology of new-media as a creative mine for spatialized horror, while simultaneously succumbing to the temptation of sentimentality at the cost of genuinely addressing its historical context. This dissertation proposes that in each of these texts, the concepts of the mechanical and the technological constitute the central problematic through which postmodern Gothic horror seeks to comprehend itself.

he solidarity between socially marginalized groups in India is often compromised, directly or indirectly, by their own internecine complicity with structures and histories of systematic social violence. We look at this problem through a close analysis of the graphic novel Bhimayana, which brings together key events from the life of B. R. Ambedkar - the architect of the Indian Constitution who was born into the "untouchable" Mahar caste - and the artwork of the Gond tribal artists Durgabai and Subhash Vyam. While there is considerable affinity in terms of socioeconomic disadvantages between the tribes and the lower castes of India, these affinities are strained by contradictions that problematize the principle of solidarity. We argue that the intrusion of complicity and guilt into performances of solidarity finally serves to strengthen the political empowerment of these groups by making it possible to acknowledge their implication in the history of social harm.

he solidarity between socially marginalized groups in India is often compromised, directly or indirectly, by their own internecine complicity with structures and histories of systematic social violence. We look at this problem through a close analysis of the graphic novel Bhimayana, which brings together key events from the life of B. R. Ambedkar - the architect of the Indian Constitution who was born into the "untouchable" Mahar caste - and the artwork of the Gond tribal artists Durgabai and Subhash Vyam. While there is considerable affinity in terms of socioeconomic disadvantages between the tribes and the lower castes of India, these affinities are strained by contradictions that problematize the principle of solidarity. We argue that the intrusion of complicity and guilt into performances of solidarity finally serves to strengthen the political empowerment of these groups by making it possible to acknowledge their implication in the history of social harm.

he solidarity between socially marginalized groups in India is often compromised, directly or indirectly, by their own internecine complicity with structures and histories of systematic social violence. We look at this problem through a close analysis of the graphic novel Bhimayana, which brings together key events from the life of B. R. Ambedkar - the architect of the Indian Constitution who was born into the "untouchable" Mahar caste - and the artwork of the Gond tribal artists Durgabai and Subhash Vyam. While there is considerable affinity in terms of socioeconomic disadvantages between the tribes and the lower castes of India, these affinities are strained by contradictions that problematize the principle of solidarity. We argue that the intrusion of complicity and guilt into performances of solidarity finally serves to strengthen the political empowerment of these groups by making it possible to acknowledge their implication in the history of social harm.

he solidarity between socially marginalized groups in India is often compromised, directly or indirectly, by their own internecine complicity with structures and histories of systematic social violence. We look at this problem through a close analysis of the graphic novel Bhimayana, which brings together key events from the life of B. R. Ambedkar - the architect of the Indian Constitution who was born into the "untouchable" Mahar caste - and the artwork of the Gond tribal artists Durgabai and Subhash Vyam. While there is considerable affinity in terms of socioeconomic disadvantages between the tribes and the lower castes of India, these affinities are strained by contradictions that problematize the principle of solidarity. We argue that the intrusion of complicity and guilt into performances of solidarity finally serves to strengthen the political empowerment of these groups by making it possible to acknowledge their implication in the history of social harm.

he solidarity between socially marginalized groups in India is often compromised, directly or indirectly, by their own internecine complicity with structures and histories of systematic social violence. We look at this problem through a close analysis of the graphic novel Bhimayana, which brings together key events from the life of B. R. Ambedkar - the architect of the Indian Constitution who was born into the "untouchable" Mahar caste - and the artwork of the Gond tribal artists Durgabai and Subhash Vyam. While there is considerable affinity in terms of socioeconomic disadvantages between the tribes and the lower castes of India, these affinities are strained by contradictions that problematize the principle of solidarity. We argue that the intrusion of complicity and guilt into performances of solidarity finally serves to strengthen the political empowerment of these groups by making it possible to acknowledge their implication in the history of social harm.

This paper studies the concept of complicity through the work of two Cambridge School poets, J.H. Prynne and Peter Riley. The acknowledgement of complicity in social, political, and economic injustices has been central for poets influenced by J.H. Prynne, and the resulting poetry, often difficult and alienating, nevertheless seeks to give lyric expression to the historical burden of being at the dispensing end of global violence. Peter Riley's work, on the other hand, implies an ethical position that also includes a real possibility of opting out of exploitative and violent historical tendencies: complicity here is emphatically within the ambit of volition. Through readings of Prynne's Refuse Collection' - which was written in response to the torture at Abu Ghraib - and Riley's Alstonefield: A Poem and Excavations, this paper argues that the differences between these positions are more a matter of emphasis than of kind.

This paper studies the concept of complicity through the work of two Cambridge School poets, J.H. Prynne and Peter Riley. The acknowledgement of complicity in social, political, and economic injustices has been central for poets influenced by J.H. Prynne, and the resulting poetry, often difficult and alienating, nevertheless seeks to give lyric expression to the historical burden of being at the dispensing end of global violence. Peter Riley's work, on the other hand, implies an ethical position that also includes a real possibility of opting out of exploitative and violent historical tendencies: complicity here is emphatically within the ambit of volition. Through readings of Prynne's Refuse Collection' - which was written in response to the torture at Abu Ghraib - and Riley's Alstonefield: A Poem and Excavations, this paper argues that the differences between these positions are more a matter of emphasis than of kind.

This paper studies the concept of complicity through the work of two Cambridge School poets, J.H. Prynne and Peter Riley. The acknowledgement of complicity in social, political, and economic injustices has been central for poets influenced by J.H. Prynne, and the resulting poetry, often difficult and alienating, nevertheless seeks to give lyric expression to the historical burden of being at the dispensing end of global violence. Peter Riley's work, on the other hand, implies an ethical position that also includes a real possibility of opting out of exploitative and violent historical tendencies: complicity here is emphatically within the ambit of volition. Through readings of Prynne's Refuse Collection' - which was written in response to the torture at Abu Ghraib - and Riley's Alstonefield: A Poem and Excavations, this paper argues that the differences between these positions are more a matter of emphasis than of kind.

This paper studies the concept of complicity through the work of two Cambridge School poets, J.H. Prynne and Peter Riley. The acknowledgement of complicity in social, political, and economic injustices has been central for poets influenced by J.H. Prynne, and the resulting poetry, often difficult and alienating, nevertheless seeks to give lyric expression to the historical burden of being at the dispensing end of global violence. Peter Riley's work, on the other hand, implies an ethical position that also includes a real possibility of opting out of exploitative and violent historical tendencies: complicity here is emphatically within the ambit of volition. Through readings of Prynne's Refuse Collection' - which was written in response to the torture at Abu Ghraib - and Riley's Alstonefield: A Poem and Excavations, this paper argues that the differences between these positions are more a matter of emphasis than of kind.

Through the works of J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and, Mark Z. Danielewski, this dissertation maps key postmodern contexts that reinvent the Gothic tradition. Texts such as Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962) and Crash (1973), Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972), and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) take familiar Gothic themes into a fundamentally postmodern arena marked by the terrifying dominance of technology and mass media, increasingly alien urban spaces, and violent neo-imperialist adventures. The novels of Carter, Ballard, and Danielewski present distinct filtrations of the massive changes within Britain and America in a post-war context. While Ballard’s own experiences as a child of the Second World War and his intense sense of disengagement with large-scale environmental changes result in a tepid, strained, and deeply ironized response to technology and modernization in the late-twentieth century, Carter provides a quintessentially postmodern narrative that offers a unique, if contentious, feminist response to the technologized world of the ’60s and the’70s. Danielewski’s work formally represents an enthusiastic embrace of the possibilities of Postmodernism and the technology of new-media as a creative mine for spatialized horror, while simultaneously succumbing to the temptation of sentimentality at the cost of genuinely addressing its historical context. This dissertation proposes that in each of these texts, the concepts of the mechanical and the technological constitute the central problematic through which postmodern Gothic horror seeks to comprehend itself.