Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump
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Verena Adamik
Abstract
H. P. Lovecraft’s oeuvre abounds with stereotypes of the racialized poor. As scholars have noted, Lovecraft’s work turns those he viewed as ‘Others’ into ‘aliens.’ Poor people of color (as opposed to the orderly White rural population and White working class) in Lovecraft’s stories are foreign, diseased, and criminal, and they threaten social and cosmic orders as they are in league with a nebulous entity that waits to wreak indescribable havoc. This chapter analyzes three ‘Lovecraftian’ novels published in 2016 - Cassandra Khaw’s Hammers on Bone,Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, and Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country. These works elucidate the connection of Trump’s 2016 rhetoric in campaign and presidential speeches and the White supremacist imagery used by Lovecraft. In these novels, the racialized poor have a special connection to an astronomical, evil entity à la Lovecraft. As carriers of numinous genes or parasitic entities (literally having ‘an alien within’) they become empowered. They thus occupy a pivotal position in forestalling or bringing about the destruction of societal order; that is, of White supremacy. Exploring the alleged risk posed by this ‘underclass,’ these works seem to foretell current representations of protesters as ‘riotous mobs’ that threaten the body politic Trump sought to make great (and White) again.
Abstract
H. P. Lovecraft’s oeuvre abounds with stereotypes of the racialized poor. As scholars have noted, Lovecraft’s work turns those he viewed as ‘Others’ into ‘aliens.’ Poor people of color (as opposed to the orderly White rural population and White working class) in Lovecraft’s stories are foreign, diseased, and criminal, and they threaten social and cosmic orders as they are in league with a nebulous entity that waits to wreak indescribable havoc. This chapter analyzes three ‘Lovecraftian’ novels published in 2016 - Cassandra Khaw’s Hammers on Bone,Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, and Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country. These works elucidate the connection of Trump’s 2016 rhetoric in campaign and presidential speeches and the White supremacist imagery used by Lovecraft. In these novels, the racialized poor have a special connection to an astronomical, evil entity à la Lovecraft. As carriers of numinous genes or parasitic entities (literally having ‘an alien within’) they become empowered. They thus occupy a pivotal position in forestalling or bringing about the destruction of societal order; that is, of White supremacy. Exploring the alleged risk posed by this ‘underclass,’ these works seem to foretell current representations of protesters as ‘riotous mobs’ that threaten the body politic Trump sought to make great (and White) again.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor 1
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Danger: Stigmatizing the Racialized Underclass
- Bong Joon Ho Meets Richard Wright: Spatialized Poverty in The Host and Parasite or ‘The Koreans Who Lived Underground’ 21
- “Holes Swarming with Human Beings”: Racing the Urban Underclass in the Antebellum City Mystery Novel 45
- The Black Body as Embodied Sound: Musicking as Personal and Communal Agency against the Othering of the Lettered Gaze in Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century 67
- Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema 85
- Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump 113
-
Disease: Pathologizing the Other
- Bounding Boukman: The Diseasing of Haitian Bodies in Representations of Race and Culture, from Zombies to Disaster Capitalism 135
- De-Pathologizing Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Racialized Discourses of Difference and Deviance in The Black Border and the Imperative of Reframing Approaches to Linguistic Variation 161
- Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction 187
- Aliens Without and Within: Abjection from Tetter to Tumor in Toni Morrison’s Novels 209
- African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19 233
-
Displacement: Constructing and Countering Collapse
- Spilling Over: Morality and Epidemiology in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts 255
- Socrates in the City of Bones: Plato’s Republic and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean 277
- Displacement and Discipline: Refugees and the Unemployed in Living and Public Spaces in Greece 293
- Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia 315
- Making the Beams of Architectural Poetry out of the Rubble of Displacement: Czesław Miłosz, Taha Muhammad Ali, and the Lyric of Constructed World Citizenry 337
- Notes on Contributors 351
- Index 355
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor 1
-
Danger: Stigmatizing the Racialized Underclass
- Bong Joon Ho Meets Richard Wright: Spatialized Poverty in The Host and Parasite or ‘The Koreans Who Lived Underground’ 21
- “Holes Swarming with Human Beings”: Racing the Urban Underclass in the Antebellum City Mystery Novel 45
- The Black Body as Embodied Sound: Musicking as Personal and Communal Agency against the Othering of the Lettered Gaze in Puerto Rico in the Early Twentieth Century 67
- Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema 85
- Alien Horrors: Lovecraft and the Racialized Underclass in the Age of Trump 113
-
Disease: Pathologizing the Other
- Bounding Boukman: The Diseasing of Haitian Bodies in Representations of Race and Culture, from Zombies to Disaster Capitalism 135
- De-Pathologizing Diversity: A Critical Analysis of Racialized Discourses of Difference and Deviance in The Black Border and the Imperative of Reframing Approaches to Linguistic Variation 161
- Sowing the Seeds: Illness as Social Imbalance and Instrument of Social Change in Octavia Butler’s Speculative Fiction 187
- Aliens Without and Within: Abjection from Tetter to Tumor in Toni Morrison’s Novels 209
- African American Women and Stigma: Reactions to Medical Targeting for HIV and COVID-19 233
-
Displacement: Constructing and Countering Collapse
- Spilling Over: Morality and Epidemiology in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts 255
- Socrates in the City of Bones: Plato’s Republic and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean 277
- Displacement and Discipline: Refugees and the Unemployed in Living and Public Spaces in Greece 293
- Resettled Refugees in the American South: Discourses of Victimization and Transgression in Clarkston, Georgia 315
- Making the Beams of Architectural Poetry out of the Rubble of Displacement: Czesław Miłosz, Taha Muhammad Ali, and the Lyric of Constructed World Citizenry 337
- Notes on Contributors 351
- Index 355
