The Return of the Repressed: The Subprime Haunted House

This article merges evaluations of Black life through the Southern Gothic and the intersection of Black studies to conceptualize the “Black Gothic”. The Black Gothic conceives of a future that requires closely examining the past and the present primarily through a Southern Gothic and Black horror lens. Much of Black Gothic’s analytics depended upon the framework outlined within Afro-pessimism and the subprime; however, it differs in its pursuits of reparations as a way forward. The Black Gothic focuses on intermingling the lived anti-Black experiences of Black existence with supernatural gothic traditions, forcing readers to determine which experience is more horrific. The Black Gothic functions as a mode of interaction with the Southern Gothic and the Black horror visual genres; its definition invokes literary and visual modes and genres that expand the many depictions of Black life in America when it is constantly threatened by elimination and devaluation. The Black horror genre seeks to expose the “afterlife of slavery” through actual and speculative means. Meanwhile, Southern Gothic’s ability to cross temporal bounds makes these the ideal genres to present the enslaved’s repressed and debted history. Southern Gothic replaced ruined gothic castles with plantations; Black Gothic replaced plantations and the monolithic “South” with northern sundown towns, redlining, and subprime mortgages. The Black Gothic’s methodology uses a systemic fiscal devaluation of Black ownership, self, and property through the subprime. In company with Fred Moten’s conceptualization of the subprime, the Black Gothic views being marked as “subprime” as an antecedent to predatory housing practices; it is instead the moment that captured Africans experience social death. Using Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Misha Green’s HBO adaptation of Matt Ruff’s novel Lovecraft Country, I define the Black Gothic and then outline its capacity to function as an analytic to further both the Southern Gothic and Black horror genres. The Black Gothic transcends gothic traditions by including films and texts that are not categorically gothic or horror and exposes the horrific and gothic modes primarily exhibited through the treatment of the descendants of enslaved Africans. Comprehensively, this article argues for a space to view the future re-evaluation of Black life through speculative and practical reparations.