The haunted house is a staple of Gothic horror. From a traditional Western perspective, stories about haunted houses are inevitably centered on human characters experiencing an unexpected change in the rules of life and death. Posthumanism, however, offers a different perspective by decentering human life and death and instead inquiring about haunted spaces themselves. Through a critical discussion of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, an establishing Gothic work for the archetypal haunted house, alongside Karan Barad’s work Posthuman Performativity, I seek to answer a key question: how can horror challenge the Western conceptualization of spaces being static objects that humans move through as dynamic actors? The depth of this question is compounded in discussing haunted houses because of the long-standing associations between the home, domesticity, and femininity. A performative reevaluation of Jackson’s Hill House offers the framework to reconceptualize relationships with the buildings around us, demanding consideration of the haunted house as a challenge to patriarchal anthropocentrism.
Cover image credit: "Winchester Mystery House" by HarshLight is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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