ConspirOX Seminar: "Cosmic Horror, White Supremacy, and the Dark Enlightenment: The Reception and Utilisation of H.P. Lovecraft within the Contemporary Extreme Right."
H.P. Lovecraft is a mainstay in popular culture and among the most widely recognised figures of pulp fiction. Over the last decade, though, Lovecraft’s oeuvre has been at the forefront of a reckoning as readers, writers, and scholars alike increasingly confront the author’s profoundly racist beliefs. Notwithstanding the veracity of such criticism, discussion has been predominantly focused on questions surrounding Lovecraft’s legacy and the degree to which the image of Lovecraft the rabid racist can be disentangled from the contents of his tales. However, there are important issues stemming from Lovecraft’s racism that remain curiously understudied, namely the response to the above accusations against Lovecraft among far-right extremists, the divergent interpretations that such factions hold regarding Lovecraft’s racial and philosophical commitments, and how these manifest in both the ideological tracts of far-right extremists and their online spaces. This paper argues that there are three main contexts wherein such actors reference Lovecraft, what are herein dubbed as ‘white supremacist’, ‘accelerationist’, and ‘anti-woke’ narratives. In turn, this Lovecraftian case serves in microcosm as an example of the manner by which extremists act to develop a canon of far-right literature and thus a veritable tradition of white supremacy and a bastion of ideological sustenance from which to draw
Date: 16 May 2024, 13:30 (Thursday, 4th week, Trinity 2024)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Seminar Room E
Speaker: Kye Allen (DPIR)
Organising department: Centre for Socio-Legal Studies
Organiser contact email address: joseph.mcaulay@csls.ox.ac.uk
Host: Dr Joseph Patrick McAulay (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies)
Part of: ConspirOX (The Oxford University Conspiracy Theory Discussion Group)
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Joseph McAulay