Decolonising Deep-Sea Gothic: Perspectives from the Americas

Abstract

This article argues that gothic tropes are central to depictions of the ocean across different genres and forms, but there is a colonial and decolonial trend in the use of horror in portrayal of the sea. This article identifies how gothic depictions of the deep-sea form part of a specific tradition of ecophobic representations of the deep in western narratives aiming to control and commodify. These depictions are profoundly marked by colonial legacies, as this paper shows by analysing briefly Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘The Deep-Sea Cables’ (1896) and William Eubank’s film Underwater (2020). The article then considers how gothic tropes persisting in post-colonial and decolonial cultural productions serve to identify, first, structural colonial violence still present today; and second, an anxiety about our ecosystem in a time of climate crisis in Rita Indiana’s novel La Mucama de Omicunlé (2015) and works emerging from the Caribbean and Latin America.