Gothic Voices

Abstract

This Element provides new ways of reading the soundscape of the Gothic text. Drawing inspiration from the field of 'sonic Gothic' studies, which has been spearheaded by the writings of Isabella van Elferen, as well as from Mladen Dolar's articulation of the psychoanalytic 'object' voice, this study introduces the critical category of 'vococentric Gothic' into Gothic scholarship. In so doing, it reads important moments in Gothic fiction when the voice takes precedence as an uncanny, monstrous or seductive object. Historically informed, the range of readings proffered demonstrate the persistence of these vocal motifs across time (from the Gothic romance to contemporary Gothic) and across intermedia forms (from literature to film to podcasts). Gothic Voices, then, provides the first dedicated account of voices of terror and horror as they develop in the Gothic mode from the Romantic period until today.

Criminality, chaos and corruption: Analyzing the narratives of labor migration dynamics in Malaysia

“…Storytelling is not a neutral process as what constitutes a "problem," how it is defined and what the proposed policy intervention should be, is shaped by policy actors "in ways calculated to gain support" for their political and/or organizational agendas (Stone, 1989: 282). In trying to make sense of a perceived problem, actors draw on a range of prior tacit knowledge and values from their own experiences and from other sources such as media, academic, legal, religious and scientific institutions (Van Hulst and Yanow, 2016), with Schwenken and Eberhardt (2010) arguing that assumptions about gender inform knowledge surrounding migration (see also , Foley, 2023).…”