Horror fiction and the allegory of the monstrous: interfaces between psychoanalysis and queer studies

Abstract

This article explores the intersections between psychoanalysis, queer studies, and horror cinema, highlighting the potential of this genre to address questions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Through a theoretical framework based on concepts such as "Das Unheimliche," abjection, and the return of the repressed, it examines cinematic narratives that employ the monstrous and the uncanny to reveal unconscious fantasies and normative transgressions. Films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show are analyzed as emblematic examples of how horror engages with the strange and the abject to challenge gender and sexuality norms, as well as to subvert symbolic and social hierarchies. The study argues that horror cinema, by integrating elements of the unconscious and cultural critique, offers a rich perspective for understanding contemporary psychic and cultural dynamics. It concludes that horror, as an aesthetic language, serves as a field of resistance that contributes to expanding psychoanalytic and cultural debates on difference and otherness.