The Work of Horror after Get Out

Abstract

Abstract:This essay examines the current cycle of Black horror in the context of both cultural and material labor to consider the following questions: What is it that horror, specifically, has to offer to representations of Blackness, especially in the context of the current movements to defend Black lives that have gained broad coalitional support? What is the work that the horror genre is doing—culturally, politically, economically—now that the genre is so frequently being reframed by the lived experience of Black people and the bio-political inscriptions of Blackness onto both individual bodies and entire populations?