Abstract
The study answers the question “What is the relationship between Romanticism and Gothicism?” It does so by posing the opposition in the correct way. The Gothic is understood as something opposite to Romanticism and at the same time within it, or as being one of its species. This conferres to the Gothic a special status theorized as that of a double negative term as in the philosophy of G.W.F Hegel. Thus, Gothicism, as opposed to Romanticism as such or any of its other particular manifestations is in a privileged position with respect to the essence of the movement. This point is taken to explain the conspicuous usage of certain Gothic figures in the works of Karl Marx and the critique of Capitalism in general, owing its validity here to its historical position in the transition from Feudalism.
Taken as a starting point is an insight of Alain Badiou, namely, that with the end of Feudalism and transition to Modernity, what occurs is a dissolution of the authority of the One. Romanticism as art, here understood as the making sensuous of the concept (in reference again to Hegel) represents this transition. If Romanticism represents the dissolution of the preceding system of social ties, their “melting into air”, and the later tumult of the Capitalist production process, Gothicism is to represent the spectral aspects of the concrete-abstract categories of labour, capital, of the “invisible hand” — and of Communism also.
This distinction is developed alongside another on the level of sexual difference. With the understanding that the dissolution of the authority of the One affects also the terms of sexual difference, and based on Lacan’s formulas of sexuation, an argument is developed providing reasons to affirm that Romanticism is by its structure something best understood as being expressed most naturally in the terms of the masculine formulas, and Gothicism in the ...