Critical Gothic Authorship, a New Methodology

Devin Tupper

In an increasingly digital world, authorship is unstable, blurred, and transmissible. Global policing and disorderliness of online texts invite anxieties of self-censorship and identity as authors navigate increased exposure and vulnerability from the integration of digital spaces into their professional lives. As technology reconstructs authorship, the Gothic, as a mode of addressing transgressions, becomes productive. I therefore propose a new methodology, in which authorship reflects on itself and technologies’ growing impact on its practice, as a means to interrogate this growing discourse. I am calling this new methodology Critical Gothic Authorship. Critical Gothic Authorship expands the Gothic beyond Gothic texts as a creative-critical expressive mode capable of assessing multiple artistic expressions while evaluating the relationships between technology, the authorial mind and body. Reconsidering Gothic authorship through a creative critical lens, in the form of a Gothic novel, therefore can account for the fragmentary nature and haunting qualities of the digital 21^st century authorial voice, while providing a template to interrogate contemporary authorship’s new disorder.