{"id":47645,"date":"2016-06-14T20:25:52","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T20:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47645"},"modified":"2017-03-16T01:29:10","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T01:29:10","slug":"a-genetic-fallacy-monstrous-allegories-of-mixed-race-in-gothic-and-contemporary-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47645","title":{"rendered":"A Genetic Fallacy: Monstrous Allegories of Mixed-Race in Gothic and Contemporary Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Genetic Fallacy: Monstrous Allegories of Mixed-Race in Gothic and Contemporary Literature<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
\n2016
\n119 pages<\/p>\n

Rylan Spenrath<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Lethbridge in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts<\/em><\/p>\n

My thesis examines the similar intersections of hybridity that are embodied in both representations of monstrosity and the politics surrounding people of mixed-race. Drawing from Robert J.C. Young\u2019s<\/a> text Colonial Desire<\/em>, I argue that monstrosity and mixed-race present diachronically parallel embodiments of hybridity. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen<\/a> views monsters as \u201cdisturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration<\/a>\u201d (loc 226); however, monsters and multiracial people do not inherently disturb category. Gothic representation of monstrosity in Mary Shelley\u2019s<\/a> Frankenstein<\/em><\/a>, Bram Stoker\u2019s<\/a> Dracula<\/em><\/a>, and Robert Louis Stevenson\u2019s<\/a> Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/em><\/a> confirms that hybridity can be exploited in order to strengthen colonial categories of Self and Other. Postmodern monstrosity in Philip K. Dick\u2019s<\/a> Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep<\/em><\/a>, and Octavia Butler\u2019s<\/a> Imago<\/em>, complicate ostensibly rigid categories of identity only for the Gothic binary to resurface beneath the masks of superheroes and supervillains.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n