The will to horror

‘The will to horror’ includes autoethnographic reflections on my experiences as a working-class subject, as well as recollections of my responses to horror cinema. These, alongside philosophical investigations of Karl Marx’s theory of the revolutionary proletariat, aim to advance a new argument about political class formation. I believe that the fears that confront individual workers in a capitalist society negate the workers’ capacity to unite and challenge their subaltern status. To counter these fears, I suggest that we consider and develop an active, oppositional tendency. I name this ‘the will to horror’. Drawing on the horror genre, Marx’s class theory, the dialectical law of the negation of the negation, and my own personal history, I offer a new, politicized version of the will for a radical working class.