Sanjana Paul: embracing the climate gothic
Photo: Wesley Tingey / Unsplash
Sanjana Paul recently published an essay "Embracing the Climate Gothic," on the blog Dark Properties. She describes the essay as "gothic literary criticism applied to the climate crisis: why the genre of decay, hauntings, and horror might be the only one honest enough to hold what we're living through. Bonus: there's also a climate gothic reading list and a climate goth playlist."
There is a particular kind of dread that arrives as a summer that won’t end. Or a neighborhood that floods every year now, a little earlier, a little deeper. Or a feeling in your bones that while something enormous is already happening, nobody can quite see it or adequately name it. Gritty realism can’t hold this feeling, nor can a thriller. The form that fits is older, stranger, and more chilling: the gothic.
