Overview

Ours is an age of precarity, as fear and anxiety have come to define the twenty-first century. Politically, economically and socially, the neoliberal orthodoxy has becomeglobally dominantand, as a direct result, traditional frameworks of protection have been dismantled,whileexistential insecurity is increasingly passed from nations and institutions to individuals. In the meantime, the Gothic mode of fiction is experiencing a new ascendancy, strengthening the argument that the Gothic represents the best literary mode with which to decode this age of precarity. In this context,the present studyoffers a groundbreaking examination of the Gothic mode's conceptual affinity with notions of neoliberal precarity.Exploring twenty-first-century Gothic fiction's engagement with the most pressing issues of our age,itconsidersthe oppression and existential entrapment experienced by marginalised populations in the provincial China of the late 1970s,and observesa modern-day Frankenstein's creature occasion violence and destruction across Baghdad post the 2003 Iraq War.The readerwill also discover vampires (representatives of a voracious, toxic economic model) in an alternate Mexico City, encounter a nomadic group traversing the only remaining wilderness in a near-future North America devastated as a result of the climate crisis, and be haunted by a spectral migrant who died in their efforts to flee political oppression in Vietnam.

Full Product Details

Author:   Timothy Rideout
Publisher:   University of Wales Press
Imprint:   University of Wales Press
ISBN:  

9781837722822

ISBN 10:   183772282
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   15 September 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

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

Reviews

""Rideout's Gothic Precarity is a lucid, excellent and quietly impassioned study, advancing a new appreciation of the Gothic in contemporary world fiction. Historically informed and geographically wide-ranging, it deftly shows how the concerns of Gothic literature can illuminate the disturbing and destructive effects of neoliberalism, with particular attention to the emergence of 'a new social class', the precariat."" -- ""Nicholas Royle, author of The Uncanny""

Author Information

Timothy Rideout is a doctoral graduate of the University of Lincoln; he currently works in the field of health and social care leadership and management.

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