Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Category
Social Sciences/Humanities
Abstract/Artist Statement
While much of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s oeuvre has been analyzed by queer theorists for homosexual metaphors within Lovecraft’s monsters, less argued is the subject of his hybrids mirroring transgender embodiment. I posit the rise of transgender identities in the Western mainstream and access to breakthrough gender-affirming care in the United States during Lovecraft’s life lend to a reading of his hybrids as embodying gender queerness. The proposed research is a literature review which draws upon interdisciplinary texts ranging from scholars in the social sciences—such as sociology and anthropology—to the hard sciences such as ecology and health sciences.
In this paper, I examine several of Lovecraft’s stories, including “The Hound,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” and the novella At the Mountains of Madness. These texts showcase Lovecraft’s hybrid monsters, such as the titular Cthulhu, who takes the form of “an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature” as a representation of transgender embodiment due to the monster’s queered hybridity. Additionally, I contribute that the “cosmic horror” felt by Lovecraft’s narrators stems from internal and externalized transphobic norms. By analyzing the historical context of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and his life, his written works reveal a hybrid amalgamation of appendages, slimy abjection, and queer transference by cisnormative imaginations. Utilizing theorists such as Julia Kristeva, J. Halberstram, and Judith Butler, I argue Lovecraft’s monsters embody the horrors of the Old Weird fiction genre by showing the public the possibility of a new, weird way of reproducing that threatened to choke out the patriarchal standard of reproduction.
Mentor Name
Louise Economides
Lovecraftian Hybrids and Transgender Embodiment
UC 332
While much of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s oeuvre has been analyzed by queer theorists for homosexual metaphors within Lovecraft’s monsters, less argued is the subject of his hybrids mirroring transgender embodiment. I posit the rise of transgender identities in the Western mainstream and access to breakthrough gender-affirming care in the United States during Lovecraft’s life lend to a reading of his hybrids as embodying gender queerness. The proposed research is a literature review which draws upon interdisciplinary texts ranging from scholars in the social sciences—such as sociology and anthropology—to the hard sciences such as ecology and health sciences.
In this paper, I examine several of Lovecraft’s stories, including “The Hound,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” and the novella At the Mountains of Madness. These texts showcase Lovecraft’s hybrid monsters, such as the titular Cthulhu, who takes the form of “an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature” as a representation of transgender embodiment due to the monster’s queered hybridity. Additionally, I contribute that the “cosmic horror” felt by Lovecraft’s narrators stems from internal and externalized transphobic norms. By analyzing the historical context of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and his life, his written works reveal a hybrid amalgamation of appendages, slimy abjection, and queer transference by cisnormative imaginations. Utilizing theorists such as Julia Kristeva, J. Halberstram, and Judith Butler, I argue Lovecraft’s monsters embody the horrors of the Old Weird fiction genre by showing the public the possibility of a new, weird way of reproducing that threatened to choke out the patriarchal standard of reproduction.