Abstract:

In his 1994 novel The Waterworks, E. L. Doctorow constructs a modern
Gothic tale of horror in the heart of New York City at the end of the nineteenth
century. Adopting Slavoj Žižek’s “parallax view,” this article contends that
Dr. Sartorius’s gory, antagonistic obsession to defeat death constructs a nightmarish
network of undead spectral “life” that escapes the ontological horizon
delineated by the Symbolic and, at the same time, disrupts its social inscription,
rendering visible fin de siècle societal antagonisms. The undead non-subjects
whose materialization is contingent upon the blood and bone marrow of the children
upon which they prey are used in this modern Gothic text as an exemplification
of the unspeakable Real that is inscribed into the very fabric of capitalism.

Publisher's Version