Posthumous/ Posthuman: Reexamining the Gothic Corpse in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Body Snatcher” and Arthur Machen’s “The Inmost Light” Author: Sudipta Mandal

Abstract

This article examines the gothicity of the corpse as a liminal and posthuman figure in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Body Snatcher” and Arthur Machen’s “The Inmost Light.” Situating these texts within the anatomical culture of the late nineteenth century, this study investigates how the posthumous body destabilizes conventional distinctions between human and nonhuman, life and death, and self and matter. Drawing on critical posthumanism and Gothic studies, the article argues that the corpse functions as an “abhuman” entity whose materiality exposes the instability of the humanist subject. Stevenson’s tale mobilizes the uncanny return of the dissected body to expose the contingent nature of human identity while Machen’s story interrogates contemporary theories of cerebral localization to challenge the presumed relationship between consciousness and bodily identity. By reading the corpse as a site of posthuman critique, the article demonstrates that fin-de-siècle Gothic fiction anticipates some of the contemporary debates on materiality, embodiment, and the limits of human exceptionalism.