Gothic Precarity: Fear and Anxiety in Twenty-First-Century Fiction: Gothic Literary Studies

Introduction: A Time of Gothic Precarity
Theoretical Framework
Definitions of Precarity
The Literary Gothic and Political Discourse
Fearful Precarity
Monstrous Precarity
Uncanny Precarity
Prevarication and Precarity
Structural Outline
Chapter One: The Genealogy of Precarity
The Origins of Precarity
Chinese Gothic
Gothic precarity and existential entrapment in Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants
Fear and the Uncanny in The Vagrants
Gothic Counter-Narratives in The Vagrants
Chapter Two: War Precarity
War Gothic
Neoliberal Wars, War Precarity and the ‘Shock Doctrine’
Fear and Monstrous Precarity in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad
Uncanny Hesitation and Uncertainty in Frankenstein in Baghdad
Chapter Three: Economic Precarity
Economic Precarity
Vampiric Economics and Economic Vampires
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain Dark Things and Mexican Precarity
Certain Monstrous Things
Un-Certain Dark Things
Chapter Four: Migrant and Refugee Precarity
Precarity’s migrants and refugees
Neoliberal Hauntology: ‘The failure of the future’
Gothic Narratives of Migration and Seeking Refuge
The Spectral Refugee in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s ‘Black-Eyed Women’
Chapter Five: Climatic Precarity
Gothic Ecology
A Neoliberal Climate Crisis
Monstrosity in Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness
The Uncanny Wilderness
The Fearfully Uncertain Wilderness
Conclusion: ‘We [still] live in Gothic times’
Concluding Findings
Bibliography