Stephen Shapiro’s research while affiliated with University of Warwick and other places

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Publications (1)


Transvaal, Transylvania: Dracula's World-System and Gothic Periodicity
  • Article

May 2008

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165 Reads

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59 Citations

Gothic Studies

Stephen Shapiro

Gothic productions appear in clusters during the capitalist world-market's transition from one economic cycle to another. Using a world-systems approach, I argue that Gothic narrative devices and sensations are both historically specific to the time of their production and representative of the general logic of capitalist time-space contortions. A world-systems perspective insists on an inter-state relational approach relatively unexplored within Gothic studies. Using Stoker's Dracula as a case study, the article claims that Dracula encodes inter-imperialist tensions, primarily those between England and Germany and their proxy agents over South African gold mines in the Transvaal. This antagonism provides the background to the Boer War, itself a forerunner to the First World War's battle among imperialists.

Citations (1)


... Reading forms of "catachrestic narrative" through the "prism of world-systems theory", Stephen Shapiro (WreC 2015: 96) has argued that gothic forms appear in conjunction with "recurring cycles of long-wave capitalist accumulation." Tracing a history of "catachrestic" vocabularies, from Voltaire's use of the word vampire to describe stock market traders, to Marx's invocation of gothic metaphors in the Communist Manifesto, Shapiro (2008) argues that the gothic mode re-emerges in response to the violent effects of economic restructuring. Describing the relationship between aesthetic forms of horror and the "splatter of capitalist periodicity" across the globe, Shapiro (2008: 44) suggests that "gothic tales express the terror of capitalist systematicity, for during these conjunctural moments, capitalism's gruesome nature is most sensationally revealed." ...

Reference:

“When the Skin Comes Off, Their True Selves Emerge”: Folkloric Irrealism and Gender Politics in Twenty-First Century Caribbean Short Fiction
Transvaal, Transylvania: Dracula's World-System and Gothic Periodicity
  • Citing Article
  • May 2008

Gothic Studies