I’m thrilled to have my essay, “World-Gothic and the Sublime” included in this outstanding collection out in February 2026, edited by Rebecca Duncan and Rebekah Cumpsty.
CUP description: “Monsters have always swarmed around the frontiers of colonialism and capitalism, from Europe’s invasion and occupation of the Americas to the planetary emergency of the present day. In this volume, we discover how the early British Gothic – far from a progenitor – is in fact a belated cultural response to capitalist modernity, one anticipated by myriad spectres haunting the plantations of the ‘New World’. Gothic did not begin in Britain, and then become global over time. Rather, as the volume reveals, gothic has always been world-gothic: a way of dealing with the alienation and anxiety that erupt with capitalist modernisation, when- and wherever this is taking place. Essays in the volume chart the new links and comparisons enabled by this insight, renovating established gothic concepts and outlining groundbreaking new theoretical infrastructure. Together, chapters provincialise the ‘western’ gothic tradition, in order to open up new possibilities for world-gothic reading.”
An abstract of my contribution:
This chapter discusses the sympathetic relationship between the gothic and sublimity regarding their serving similar social and political functions, emphasising their adaptability to the rhetorical interests of those in power in a given place and time. It then goes on to clarify their differences and consider whether they have a more ‘universal’ application than typically understood by taking a broadly historical approach, to examine the xenophobic and gendered origins of the sublime, and the ideological changes that comes with the post-Kantian tradition. Rethinking the sublime as the differend identified by Jean-François Lyotard alerts us to imbalanced power relations and the demand for new idioms that give voice to the silenced, thus avoiding the sublime’s traditional claim to transcendence and therefore Western humanism. Similarly, a world-gothic sublime serves to witness the differend, the power imbalance between the ‘normal,’ who set the terms of any tribunal, and the Other, who is silenced.
Pre-order available now!
Jana Giles 