The Visceropoetics of Horror: Abdominal Crisis, Surgical Trauma, and Gastrointestinal Torment in Thomas Ligotti

In this essay, I aim to understand the relation between horror and the abdomen in the work of Thomas Ligotti by piecing together a gastrointestinal anti-system that blurs the lines, or mucosal layers, among mind, body, and spirit, wherein the corporeal and the textual are interwoven through a ‘visceropoetics’. As such, I foreground the underlying prevalence of an alternating dialectic of physical/psychic collapse and posit the necessity for developing a theoretical approach to modern horror fiction that operates from an approach which reveals the inevitable collapse of the human body into stages of dis-ease and gastrointestinal torment.