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Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters

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Indeed, the literary genre that we know as the gothic is inexhaustible in its interpretive capacity. From Freud's theory of the Uncanny and Mourning/Melancholia, to Feminist theories and reader response approaches (such as that of Norman Holland's), the gothic as a literary outsider has come a long way from its inception as a marginal form of literature to become one of the most studied and complex form of writing. Halberstam's book is one of the latest critical offerings of reading the Gothic, and it is indeed a timely arrival of an otherwise over-determined reading of this particular genre from the various theoretical approaches (interesting as they may be). Halberstam's approach, grounded in history and racism, renews the gothic's early preoccupation with otherness and the fear of it, but which emphasizes the societal fear of the alien/foreign other, and not so much the struggle between the public and private selves (the beloved of psychoanalytical theory). Her most interesting chapter is the reading of Stoker's `Dracula' as an anti-semitic propoganda text; indeed, I have appropriated some of her ideas in my view on postcolonial gothic, for I find that her theoretical stance has much to offer in this new and under-emphasized aspect of gothic literature. Halberstam's careful and brilliant intertwining of psychoanalysis, race-relations theory (history) and literary deconstruction is also critically executed in clear, precise language. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to have a fresh outlook on gothic literature.