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This seminar is about monsters, psychic erosion and desire, feral behaviour and impassioned acts of revenge. We will discuss Patel and Yonder’s recent novels in the context of women’s writing and visual culture, the horror genre, creative non-fiction and experimental takes on the subject of transgression and existential horror in the 21st century. Along the way, will also discuss The Return of the Repressed (Louise Bourgeois), Paula Rego and the filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night).
With an admittedly strong Jungian undercurrent, Patel brings to conscious light the many discretely abusive and destructive acts propagated by the psyche in interpersonal relationships when skewed by the fear and adoration that accompany power dynamics. This adds to the accuracy of a social narrative arrived at through the road less traveled: the subtle polemicism of “saying the quiet parts out loud.” (Sheena Patel on her debut I’m A Fan, The Lucy Writers)
This mother, who is stuck at home with her hyperactive two-year-old son, flush with resentment at her largely absent husband, feels herself changing. Not just on the outside, but inside, too. While her eyebrows caterpillar across her brow and hair sprouts on the tops of her feet, a feral impulsivity growls inside her: “She wasn’t turning into a dog … she could not let herself imagine such fanciful things, and didn’t, except at night, once the boy was asleep, when she sat, panting, at the window, staring into the open dark night.” As her frustration with the inertia of bourgeois domesticity grows, the allure of the primal becomes stronger. (Review of Rachel Yonder’s Nightbitch, The Guardian).
Further reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/17/nightbitch-by-rachel-yoder-review-a-feral-debut
http://lucywritersplatform.com/2022/08/23/in-conversation-with-author-sheena-patel-say-the-thing-that-youre-not-supposed-to-say-the-thing-you-normally-keep-quiet-about/
https://www.jungcentre.com/the-origin-of-the-shadow
