Turner, Lynn. 2019. 'Raising animals: the becoming-time of space between cellar and kennel'. In: SpaceTime, Society of Literature, Science and the Arts (EU). Athens, Greece 25-28 June 2019. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Abstract or Description

‘Have you fed the dogs yet?’ This anxious phrase, along with agitated barking, frequently reminds us that somewhere there are dogs close to the country house in which Lucky McKee’s 2011 horror film The Woman is set. This house or The House - following the definite article of the title - invites a spatial analysis of metaphysics as a gendered oikos, not least since the film’s patriarch-lawyer captures a ‘feral’ woman, chains her in the cellar and frames her as the family civilization project. Crucially, the film is also shadowed by ‘the animal,’ the static concept of which dogs this otherwise astonishing revenge narrative. The spatial and conceptual parallel between cellar and kennel substantially structures the film. Classically uncanny, only the ‘animal’ in the cellar returns to light - when the Woman is finally freed. The key horror surfaces in the penultimate revelation of just what has been going on with the dogs: the family’s anopthalmic daughter has been raised as one. Her emergence however, channels not the transcendence of a recuperative humanity but an immanent pethood that raises doubts about the alternative presented by the feminized family at the end.

Part of the Panel:
primal scenes of speciation and ‘the becoming-space of time’
Panel convenor: Lynn Turner

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Keywords:	The Woman, Lucky McKee, Horror, Dogs, Animals, Cellar, Kennel
Related URLs:	http://st-slsaeu2019.indigoflicks.com/
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Visual Cultures
Dates:	Date Event 22 March 2019 Accepted
Event Location:	Athens, Greece
Date range:	25-28 June 2019
Item ID:	25931
Date Deposited:	27 Mar 2019 10:36
Last Modified:	27 Mar 2019 10:36
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/25931

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