Class

Fiction Toolkit: Postcolonial Fantasy and Horror Writing

It’s one thing to feel scared when we watch scary movies, and it’s another to feel that same fear as we read. Writers throughout history have found ways of communicating dread, terror, paranoia, and anguish through the written word. The French Continental philosopher Maurice Blanchot writes: “Disaster shuts down language. Disaster cannot be fathomed. Disaster stops all speech because the suffering it causes is so total and complete.” Ironically, horror writing emerges out of this disastrous speechlessness, mining the breakdown of speech for its capacity to fundamentally disorient and perturb us. And what happens too when the horror is not supernatural creature but instead the human?

Then we find ourselves in the afterlife of the postcolonial, or own present-day paranoid condition in which late-stage capitalism forms the suspenseful backdrop of our inevitable demise. Horror writing––or otherwise, the writing of the disaster––springs out of a lived persecutory reality, one which the postcolonial activist is intimately aware of. Thus our examination of horror writing will comprise a series of horror films and literary texts, as well as texts from psychology and psychoanalysis (e.g. Melanie Klein’s description of “paranoia”). Students will walk away with new horror writing and reflective writings about the intersection of horror and the postcolonial afterlife.

All Classes listed on the Loft website take place in Central Time.

Instructions for Accessing This Online Class

In order to access live class meetings, you must have the Zoom application downloaded to your computer. You will also need a WiFi/Internet connection throughout the duration of your scheduled meeting and a computer with audio and video capability. The information to join your Zoom classroom will be provided in your confirmation email upon registration. Please check spam folders if you do not see this email upon registration. For more information on how to use Zoom, please see our training manual here.

Some classes use a supplemental Google Classroom page. Should your teaching artist use Google Classroom, you will be invited to join the classroom via email at least 24 hours in advance of your class (check spam folders if you are not seeing this invitation). Please note that Google Classroom requires a Gmail address to access the Classroom. If you do not have a Gmail account, the email invitation will be sent to the email address we have on file and will prompt you to create a free account or enter an existing account to join the classroom. If we are unable to send an email invitation to your non-gmail account, you will be contacted by a staff member to provide a Gmail address. If you do not have a Gmail account, you can create a free account here. Should you have concerns about this, please contact a Loft staff member at [email protected] or 612-379-8999. For more information on how to use Google Classroom, please see our training manual here.