Approaching monsters and mutants

‘If you see a monster at your doorstep, the wise thing to do is shut the door.’

–Nnedi Okorafor, ‘On the Road’ (2013, 84)

With her specific focus on British Gothic fictions, Emily Horton contributes to our understanding of the shifting boundaries of national identity challenged by the complexities of a multiethnic society, haunted by nostalgic memories of its imperial past. Horton explains that her approach does not reaffirm older nation-oriented perspectives, since her analysis of the texts is informed by ‘decolonial, intersectional, and planetary viewpoints’ (2024, 5). Adopting a multi-lens approach allows her to investigate how writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Helen Oyeyemi, and Nadeem Aslam ‘challenge nationalist understandings of British identity through their own personal backgrounds’ as first- or second-generation migrant British residents (Horton 2024, 6). The volume is organized into nine chapters: ‘Post-9/11 Gothic’, ‘Decolonial Gothic’, ‘Gothic Inheritance’, ‘Digital Gothic’, ‘Gothic Homelessness’, ‘The Gothic City’, ‘Brexit Gothic’, ‘Pandemic Gothic’, and ‘Wet Gothic’. While Horton considers Gothic representations of traumatic events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the Covid-19 pandemic, her observations of the political implications of narration in Brexit Gothic are particularly original. For Horton, Brexit’s ‘nostalgia for empire’, as well as for a way of living and working in the countryside, can be recognized in ‘a Gothic return to local superstition and folklore, both as right-wing tools of hatred and exclusion and as critical registers of defunct utopias by nationalist isolationism’ (2024, 161). It is interesting to note how her approach relates to a recent trend in Gothic studies, exemplified by Xavier Aldana’s Body Gothic (2014), that shifts the readers’ attention from ‘the spectral, uncanny and psychological aspects of the gothic’ to corporeality (2). Horton acknowledges this trend, but prefers a reading that focuses on spectres and haunting along the line of works such as Joanne Watkiss’ Gothic Contemporaries: The Haunted Text (2012), Isabella van Elferen’s Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny (2012), or the more recent Spectral Spain: Haunted Houses, Silent Spaces and Traumatic Memories in Post-Franco Gothic Fiction by Heidi Backes (2024).

Kaisa Kortekallio’s Mutant Narratives in Ecological Science Fiction approaches monsters and mutants from a different perspective by drawing upon ecocriticism, posthumanism, and narrative theory. The volume is divided into six chapters: ‘Introduction: Literary Scholars in the Anthropocene’, ‘More-than-Human Reading and Experiential Change’, ‘Mutant Figures and Reading Bodies’, ‘Readerly Choreographies and Paolo Bacigalupi’s Climate Fiction’, ‘Embodied Estrangement and Jeff VanderMeer’s The Southern Reach’, and ‘Conclusion: More-than-Human Reading and Subjective Experience’. As Kortekallio explains, the book explores ‘whether conscious engagement with mutant narratives can give rise to more-than-human modes of experience’ specifically by testing ‘the malleability of readerly experience’ (2023, 4). She looks at the different positions literary scholars of the Anthropocene adopt in their studies and subscribes to that of a ‘medium’ for the Anthropocene, a task that requires cultivating ‘skills and capacities that may be described as posthuman or more-than-human’ (Kortekallio 2023, 4, italics in original). The author views reading as embodied experience, where ‘the reader and the narratives are considered to form cognitive assemblages’ (Kortekallio 2023, 5, italics in original). To understand Kortekallio’s method, we should first become familiar with its core dimensions. Key concepts include: mutant narratives, posthumanism, enactivism, embodied estrangement, and more-than-human reading. Not surprisingly, the wide variety of explanatory and descriptive tools from different fields of study form a complex web of interconnected references. Kortekallio’s discussion of the potential of the proposed narratives for her reading model draws our attention to some of the most common mutations of humanist forms that inhabit twenty-first-century science fiction – robots, androids, mutants, and hybrids (2023, 6). Such examples prepare us for the more elaborate examination of the concept of mutation. Unsurprisingly, adopting a science fiction framework necessitates engagement with Darko Suvin’s ‘understanding of SF as the literature of cognitive estrangement’ (1979, 4, italics in original). Kortekallio, however, prefers the term ‘embodied estrangement’, since this interpretative choice reflects her emphasis on the strange and uncomfortable bodily feelings that mutant narratives evoke (2023, 14). The notion of embodied estrangement allows her to explore the bodily feelings the reader experiences while participating in the interpretative process of reading ecological science fiction.

In the metamorphic zone

‘Now the ontological proposition I’d like to make is that what semiotics designates as a common trading zone—that is, morphism—is a property of the world itself and not only a feature of the language about the world.’

–Bruno Latour, ‘Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene’ (2014, 12)

Literary and cultural studies often invoke the notion of transformation to recalibrate the interpretative conventions available to explore Gothic texts. As David Punter notes, ‘what Gothic and much contemporary criticism and cultural commentary share is indeed an overarching, even a sublime, awareness of mutability’ (2012, 3, italics in original). To reflect twenty-first-century global anxieties, the Gothic ‘endlessly reinvents itself’ (McEvoy 2007, 7). Traditional tropes, such as the uncanny or the spectral, have continually been given new inflections as a result of the intersection between Gothic studies and other fields of research. Thus, contemporary manifestations of the Gothic evidence cultural shifts towards globalisation (Globalgothic), posthumanism (Posthuman Gothic), or decolonialisation (Decolonial Gothic), among others, which has also led to further fragmentation in Gothic studies. The mutability of the Gothic mode under the influence of recent theoretical developments is particularly notable in the closing chapter of Horton’s book: ‘Wet Gothic: Ecofeminism and Horror in Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea, Daisy Johnson’s Fen, and Zoe Gilbert’s Folk’. Of course, the relationship between Gothic fiction and feminist theory is not new: Ellen Moers coined the term ‘Female Gothic’ in Literary Women in 1976, and the concept has since evolved into various modern formations including ‘Postfeminist Gothic’ and ‘Lesbian Gothic’. Tracing generic particularities and creative negotiations uncovers a complex and often problematic intersection between Feminist theory and the Gothic or, as Diana Wallace puts it, ‘Feminist theory has been “haunted” by Gothic metaphors for centuries’ (2009, 38). Horton’s reading, which in her own words aligns with Wet Gothic ecofeminism (2024, 199), deserves special attention here for its sophisticated model of critique that connects the Gothic, ecofeminism, and oceanic studies. The term ‘ecofeminism’ was coined by French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne in her work Le feminisme ou la mort in 1974, appearing at roughly the same historical juncture as Moers’s ‘Female Gothic’. Since then, ecofeminists have embraced the posthuman turn, showing ethical responsibilities for non-human forms of life, while also creating transversal connections with Indigenous and decolonial feminists. Horton’s ‘Wet Gothic ecofeminism’ is a good example of this posthuman convergence. She brings into focus environmental consciousness and points to the neglect of water’s importance in Gothic scholarship. In the context of the contemporary rhetoric about the permeability of Britain’s coastal borders, new British women’s writing, such as Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea (2022), Daisy Johnson’s Fen (2016), and Zoe Gilbert’s Folk (2018), offer ‘a view of water as not only uncanny, but also eerie, weird, and monstrous’ (Horton 2024, 199).

To situate the monstrous in ecological science fiction and relate it to the concept of mutation is to raise controversial questions and foresee ambiguous answers. In Kortekallio’s book the monstrous destabilises human mastery and triggers embodied reading experience. She also finds a direct link between monsters and mutants in that ‘the modern mutants of Anglo-American science fiction emerge from a long history of metamorphoses and monstrous/divine [mythological] figures’ (Kortekallio 2023, 79). A detailed discussion of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation (2014) in Chapter 5 features a biologist’s encounter with a shapeshifting monster and ‘the perceptual uncertainty’ she experiences (Kortekallio 2023, 154). This is an intriguing claim, since we might equally ask if mutant narratives cause the reader to experience a similar perceptual uncertainty. For Kortekallio, ‘mutant narratives are uneasy hybrids of human-centered and posthumanist narratives that contain potential for ecological understanding’ (2023, 10). Outlining the humanist values at play in mutant narratives, she presents a series of posthumanist critiques of experientiality (Chapter 2), character (Chapters 3 and 4), and reading (Chapter 5).

In ‘Mutant Figures and Character Theory’ Kortekallio discusses ‘the problematic limitations set by the term character’ (2023, 88, italics in original) and why she chooses the term (mutant) figure, instead. In narratology, the concept of character has undergone several transformations over time. Some studies foreground the social and historical context of the authors and the characters they create, while others, adopting a psychoanalytic perspective, draw our attention to characters’ psyches. The 1980s critical scene saw the development of cognitive theories about character, which took into account the reader’s perception and affective experiences, leading to the 90’s ‘cognitive turn’. Jens Eder argues that cognitive theory regards reception as an active process, ‘anchored in human physicality and experience’ (2003, 283). Among other examples of the creative connection between cognitive theories and approaches to characters in narratology, we might point to Jonathan Culpeper’s Language and Characterisation (2001), which explores how a particular impression of the character is created in the reader’s mind, or Alan Palmer’s Fictional Minds (2004), emphasizing how fictional minds are constructed by the reader’s inferences. That is where Kortekallio’s issue with the term ‘character’ lies. The problem for her is that the term ‘character’ asks us to accept a constructed reality ‘to be accessed and described by both perception and fiction through a mode of realist mimetic referentiality’ (Kortekallio 2023, 91). By contrast, the term ‘mutant’ allows her to avoid anthropocentric assumptions.

Human – more-than-human – less-than-human

‘As each species diminishes, its environment collapses a little more.’

–Mark Bould, The Anthropocene Unconscious (2021, 2)

Hierarchical distinctions between the human and the non-human support a structural model in which the human has the privilege of agency and the non-human is considered an accessible, exploitable, and disposable resource. Various oppressed minority communities, such as Black and Indigenous people, or migrant and refugee populations, have constantly been subject to a process of dehumanisation in an attempt to mark them as inferior. Indeed, Rosi Braidotti starts her seminal work The Posthuman with the thought-provoking statement: ‘Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.’ (2013, 1). One can appreciate Braidotti’s dilemma and still ask, what are the ongoing transformations of the human? And how do they affect the demarcation lines between human and non-human? In Gothic and science fiction the questions above are intimately linked to our understanding of monstrosity, since it is the monsters populating these texts that make the status of the human problematic. The concept of monstrosity is conditioned on culture, beliefs, ideologies and other factors that determine what should be labelled as ‘normal’ in a certain historical period and location. It is against this background that monsters can be best defined in Jack Halberstam’s terms as ‘meaning machines’ (2000, 21). Interestingly, Horton illustrates the inherent ambiguity of the monstrous by narrowing down the different meanings and tendencies in recent British Gothic works to two contradictory manifestations: ‘a critical register of hatred, identifying nationalist, misogynist, and racist cultural associations attached to the Other’ and ‘a transgressive, confused, and/or defenceless outsider demanding respect and critical understanding’ (2024, 16). A distinctive narrative strategy that remains essential in Gothic writings is spectral spatiality associated in the modern city with labyrinthian streets and dark corners which hide a potential source of terror. Urban Gothic has long embraced the aesthetics of decay to create mysterious spaces inhabited by criminals and monsters within the metropolis, as a reflection of our anxieties surrounding the nature of human identity and the dimensions of ‘otherness’. In the chapter ‘The Gothic City’, Horton addresses a wide range of themes, such as alienation, degradation, and violence, blending the analysis of uncanny urban spaces with social critique of ‘a monstrous neoliberal governance indifferent to xenophobic and patriarchal oppression’ (2024, 158). She is not merely concerned with the phantasmagoric properties of the urban environment, but tries to find a different way to create empathy for the invisible victims of global neoliberal politics. The chapter ‘Gothic Homelessness’ responds to the harrowing truth of homelessness, highlighting its multiple layers of vulnerability. Horton sees Britain’s contemporary politics as part of global neoliberalism, whose focus on profiteering has a great impact on the most vulnerable. She draws on Judith Butler’s Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004) to demonstrate how visible displays of vulnerability in Ali Smith’s Hotel World (2001) can ‘disqualify individuals from consideration as equally human’ (Horton 2024, 121).

Similarly, ecological fiction exposes the role of neoliberalism in the destruction of local and global environments, offering reflections on inequality, vulnerability, and justice. In this context, ‘Anthropocene fictions’ (Trexler 2015) address the problem of human-generated environmental pollution and devastation that intensify existing vulnerabilities. In an effort to come to terms with a reality in which the division between human and nonhuman no longer holds, Kortekallio’s analysis of mutant narratives combines two strains of thought: posthumanism and enactivism. From the posthumanist perspective, she explores subjectivity as part of ‘more-than-human ecologies’, whereas from the enactivist perspective on literature, she studies the embodied aspects of reading as subjective experience (Kortekallio 2023, 14). The two approaches converge into the key idea of her book – more-than-human reading. From surface to deep reading, from close reading to Franco Moretti’s distant reading, from Fredric Jameson’s ‘symptomatic reading’ (1981, 60) to Rita Felski’s alternative ‘postcritical reading’ (2015, 12), reading styles have attracted much critical attention in recent years. For Kortekallio, reading fiction involves ‘skillful engagement with affective narrative techniques’ (2023, 13) that cause the readerly dynamics to mutate in line with the text. The turn to affect has produced a range of new approaches interested in the meanings provoked by the reading experience. In this sense, Brian Massumi’s ‘the autonomy of affect’ (2002, 35) has given rise to numerous interpretative possibilities that deal with the dimensions of readerly experience that involve unconscious affective resonances. Kortekallio further develops the concept of more-than-human reading by exemplifying related notions: the ‘kinesic’ and ‘kinetic’ in N. K. Jemisin’s novel The Fifth Season (2015), ‘readerly choreography’ in Paolo Bacigalupi’s short story ‘The People of Sand and Slag’ (2004) and the novel The Windup Girl (2009), ‘more-than-human writing and reading’ in Jeff VanderMeer’s The Southern Reach trilogy (2014). This theoretical assemblage suggests that ‘more-than-human reading’ is a productive category of analysis, as it allows her to create an eclectic methodological model without losing sight of the literary works she explores. Kortekallio’s approach to reading offers a valuable access point to the study of ‘more-than-human experience’, yet the complexity of mapping different theories onto each other results in a potentially overladen framework. Notwithstanding this, Kortekallio’s study of mutability in ecological science fiction invites the reader to consider new ways of knowing the human.

Conclusions

Heavily discussed across disciplines for decades, the controversial notions of monsters and mutants remain relevant in understanding our experience in times marked by climate crisis, growing inequalities, and anxiety about the status of the human amid the context of our increasing dependence on digital technologies. Kortekallio’s Mutant Narratives in Ecological Science Fiction and Horton’s 21st-Century British Gothic navigate, to various degrees, the consequences of these recent interconnected developments. Written for a student and academic audience, their detailed and theoretically rigorous analyses of monsters and mutants in contemporary literature prove most instructive.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.