Ethnogothic and Ecohorror in Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García

Abstract

The main theme of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's novel Mexican Gothic (2020) unfolds in a complex discussion about genderized racism, notions of humanity, and monstrosity, anchored in the transgressive power of fungi. In dialogue with theories of Literature, Biology, and philosophical discussions, this article analyzes the natural and social nuances of horror present in Mexican Gothic (2020) in order to understand how the genre is updated through the lens of Ecohorror (subgenre that define Enviroment as main source of threats to human) and of Ecogothic (subgenre that criticizes the human intervention against Environment, and situates White human being as a true threat (Ko and Ko; Tidwell) taking on a surprisingly macabre aspect, despite its reasonable predictability. In this sense, this article aims to demonstrate how the inheritance of the gothic as a genre serves as a starting point for the journey of the young socialite Noemí, the protagonist of Mexican Gothic. To sum up, the novel can be read as an appropriation of the gothic genre that constitutes an Ethnogothic tradition (committed to a Pos-Colonial critic), exposing both the conservative form in which Colonial tropes are used since the 18th century, while also naming the experience of horror from a historically silenced social perspective, that of the Other.