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cobaltnineVNS Day 2
300 words or less on the connection between Lovecraft’s personal biases and the Otherness of his mythos.
To continue the ideas laid out previously, I propose that the two sides in many of Lovecraft’s stories consist of what is perceived to be quantitative, clinical and scientific human perspective in opposition to an insular, secretive, cryptic ‘other.’ This other can take the form of the limitless void; the depths of space, or the abyssal depths; it can also be sensed, by someone of Lovecraft’s time and inclinations, to be present in the ethnic enclaves of cities, of insular small towns such as in ‘The Rats in the Walls,’ or, to take it to an extreme, in non-Anglo cultures of any type.
It could also be argued that the perception - especially by someone in an anxious state - that oneself can be understood but cannot understand, due to language barriers or other cultural states that foster an ‘other’ identiy for the purposes of cultural cohesion - can create a sort of paranoia. Knowing in part consists of being able to quantify; anything innumerable or being perceived to be so - the rats, in this story, but consider anti-immigrant statements that speculate on either women who never leave the house or the number of people sharing housing. Lack of cultural knowledge further creates barriers to knowing, or to community, creating an ‘other’ not out in space, but on the other side of town.
300 words or less on the connection between Lovecraft’s personal biases and the Otherness of his mythos.
To continue the ideas laid out previously, I propose that the two sides in many of Lovecraft’s stories consist of what is perceived to be quantitative, clinical and scientific human perspective in opposition to an insular, secretive, cryptic ‘other.’ This other can take the form of the limitless void; the depths of space, or the abyssal depths; it can also be sensed, by someone of Lovecraft’s time and inclinations, to be present in the ethnic enclaves of cities, of insular small towns such as in ‘The Rats in the Walls,’ or, to take it to an extreme, in non-Anglo cultures of any type.
It could also be argued that the perception - especially by someone in an anxious state - that oneself can be understood but cannot understand, due to language barriers or other cultural states that foster an ‘other’ identiy for the purposes of cultural cohesion - can create a sort of paranoia. Knowing in part consists of being able to quantify; anything innumerable or being perceived to be so - the rats, in this story, but consider anti-immigrant statements that speculate on either women who never leave the house or the number of people sharing housing. Lack of cultural knowledge further creates barriers to knowing, or to community, creating an ‘other’ not out in space, but on the other side of town.
