Gothic Epistemology: Fear and Authority in Narrative Form

Exploring how Gothic fiction interrogates knowledge systems, epistemic authority, and the politics of mystery. Focus on texts where genre demands uncomfortable perspective-shifting rather than atmospheric decoration—where supernatural or mysterious elements expose structural violence rather than merely providing aesthetic pleasure. Examining whether form forces inhabitation of oppressive logic (Swiftian horror) versus comfortable destabilization (Chesterton's vanishing tables).

1 books

  1. 1 Cover of The Green Mummy
    The Green Mummy Hume, Fergus

    The Green Mummy exemplifies Victorian Gothic mystery as aesthetic accumulation rather than epistemological architecture. Professor Braddock—archaeologist obsessed with dead civilizations, dismissing present-day world—parallels colonial extraction (mummies as extracted artifacts) but without challenging why this epistemology matters now. Text's mysterious references accumulate atmospherically across chapters 8-27 without interrogating knowledge production systems. Unlike Swiftian horror that forces inhabitation of oppressive logic, Hume performs atmospheric cleverness: whose reality gets destabilized? None—the detective fiction hierarchy of specialized expertise is validated rather than questioned. Beauty overwrites accountability; mystery aestheticizes extraction without demanding moral reckoning. 3-star acknowledges technical atmosphere while rejecting political efficacy.