Transgender Technohorror with Mars Nicoli

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In his analysis of trans internet history, Dame-Griff (2023) points to the crucial role digital connectivity played in building community networks and support systems for trans people, being a “lifeline” for many trans folks living in isolation from in-person trans communities. This phenomenon however caused an emotional overreliance on digital platforms for connection, further dividing and isolating trans individuals along axes of access and discouraging them from forming in-person bonds. The underlying anxieties and isolation borne of this social overreliance on the internet has recently manifested in the production of trans-authored horror narratives which engage with the tension between the need to gather digitally and the horrific isolation and vulnerability which comes from it – with examples across artforms such as cinema(Computer Hearts, CyberGrime, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair…), webcomics (WhatHappens Next) and novels (Brainwyrms, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We LastSpoke…).The proposed talk will explore this emerging microgenre, which I define as “Transgender Technohorror”, informed by Powell (2018) and Burke’s (2024) theories of technohorror. While experiences like social alienation and loss of contact embodied self through the internet are not unique to trans people, I pose that trans artists hold an epistemic privilege in this genre due to the documented, crucial role of the internet in trans community-building. In the talk, adapted from an upcoming publication, I will analyse Alison Rumfitt’s novel Brainwyrms as a way to explore features of this trans-authored microgenre, with a focus on how real-life trans experiences inform topical horror elements.

Burke, M. J. (2024). The Ethics of Horror: Spectral Alerity in Twenty-First Century Horror Film. Lexington Books.

Dame-Griff, A. (2023). The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet. NYUPress.

Powell, D. W. (2018). Horror Culture in the New Millennium: Digital Dissonance and Technohorror. Bloomsbury Publishing.https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vq94DwAAQBAJ