IN-PERSON London. Section B

Abstract

In The Condition of the Working Class in England, Friedrich Engels laments the “brutal indifference” of the organisation of urban space in London – and the class categories thereby reified – as key symptoms and technologies of modernity. Lump enough people together and “the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest” is brought into stark relief. What effect does this have on the cultural imaginary? Rather than thinking of the Gothic as merely dialectically produced by these anxieties of modernity, in the vein of Ridenhour and others, our paper suggests that it functions as a virtual system of affects, images and impulses that facilitates a kind of collective catharsis wallpapering over the contradictions of urban living, thus managing the urban abject, the urban as abject. While urban space forces us to confront the abject to an unprecedented degree – logistically through sewerage and stormwater drainage, the disposal of corpses, and the distribution of food and its waste; socially, through the construction and reification of class categories underpinning urban planning; and culturally, through the development of shared public spaces and media – Gothic visions of the urban make its cities more psychically inhabitable even as neoliberal projects tear apart social safety nets, erecting luxury skyscrapers in their stead. Through discussion of some key contemporary Gothic works set in London, including Creep (2004), Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), and Censor (2021), this paper begins to navigate this relationship between urban development and Gothic in the 21st century.