Citation

Ambrisco AS. Horror Studies 2015; 6(1): 19-38.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015)

DOI

10.1386/host.6.1.19_1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article examines Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 Gothic novel The Historian, a vampire novel that undermines its fantasies of a wholly accessible past by repeated assurances that history is always fabricated. The novel in fact presents not just Dracula but the past itself as a ghostly amalgam of absence and presence. This spectralization of the past is a symptom of the narrator's own traumatic past, and Dracula becomes a mask for a repressed family narrative of suicide. In Kostova's handling, however, the Gothic also becomes a way of engaging larger societal traumas when the novel presents Dracula as a figure for the suicidal terrorist. This post-9/11 novel ultimately points to and represses the fears and complexities surrounding terrorism since 9/11, especially the overwhelming fear that US efforts at counterterrorism are turning America into the very thing it is trying to fight. © 2015 Intellect Ltd Article.

Language: en

Keywords

Terrorism; Suicide; Counter-terrorism; Dracula; Ghosts; Gothic