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  • Introduction

  • Edited by Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick, Mark Storey, University of Warwick
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to American Horror
    Published online:
    21 July 2022
    Print publication:
    04 August 2022, pp 1-12
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  • Summary

    This chapter argues that American horror is defined both by its “paraliterary” status and by its representations of the bloodied body in pain. Unlike the more culturally prestigious category of the Gothic, which typically dwells on the crisis of the rational mind, horror has tended to appear in culturally maligned or ephemeral forms and focus on corporeal pain, violence, and distress. Horror's focus on the body, it is further suggested, stems from the modern American state's withholding of freedoms according to embodied characteristics: race, gender, sexuality, ability, and so on. The historical appearance of horror narratives often correlates to crisis and tensions surrounding the expansion of the civil and political rights that centrist liberalism promised, so that when previously excluded or marginalized groups begin to demand inclusion and recognition of their past disempowerment, horror becomes a medium especially electric with these concerns.