QUEER VAMPIRES AND THE IDEOLOGY OF GOTHIC (original) (raw)

Literary genres as sites of discursive practice, from a Foucauldian point of view, become part of the power mechanisms that operate within a society. In this sense, they function as the producers and the reproducers of the regimes of truth, and cease to be mere structures or tools used to communicate meaning or, simply, the aesthetic aspect of the text. They, rather, contribute to the production of meaning and become a part of the meaning. However, Foucault is not nihilistic or pessimistic about the power-discourse relationship and suggests that “[d]iscourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart” (Foucault, 1998, p. 100). Within this frame of mind, the discursive patterns of power within a textual body are traceable and possible to reveal. Accordingly, the aim of this work is to reveal the discursive power mechanisms within the Gothic genre focusing specifically on the portrayal of the lesbian vampire in several vampire movies as examples of contemporary Gothic.