Craven, Allison, and Sandars, Diana (2023) Introduction: Gothic Tides in the Oceanic South-Uncanny Contradictions and Compulsions. In: Craven, Allison, and Sandars, Diana, (eds.) Gothic in the Oceanic South: Maritime, Marine and Aquatic Uncanny in Southern Waters. Routledge, Abingdon, UK.

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Abstract

The Introduction outlines the scope and intent of this interdisciplinary collection, which comprises contributions from screen, literary, and cultural studies; environmental humanities, human geography, and creative practice in ecoacoustic sound art; and poetry. The collection responds in part to Emily Alder’s formulation of “nautical Gothic,” a construction associated with northern seas and oceans in canonical Gothic literature, within the much less-explored oceans and waterways of the global precinct defined by Meg Samuelson and Charne Lavery as the “oceanic South.” These southern waters are defined by a “double vision” (Jolly) between Oceanic and settler-colonial epistemologies that invites a closer consideration of the uncanny and the sublime in their regional myths and materialities. In exploring the relationship of the collection to the “oceanic turn” (Blum; Hofmeyr) and “hydrocolonialism” (Hofmeyr), this Introduction probes the colonial and postcolonial resonances of Gothic affect and aesthetics in the various chapters, and a recurring motif of uncanny home, and the relevance of Rebecca Duncan’s notion of “Gothic vulnerability” as an axis of engagement with the oceanic South in bearing witness to the hauntings and dislocations that underlie the double vision of these waters.

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