abhuman

Robin Hamilton robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM
Sun Feb 13 19:49:01 UTC 2011


Sounds as if it's emerging from the space originally delineated by
H.P.Lovecraft.  Kinda thing he would have said, even if he didn't.

Robin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2011 1:59 PM
Subject: abhuman


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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      abhuman
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>
> Not in OED but scores of GB hits:
>
>
> 1997 _Australasian Victorian Studies Journal_ III 47 [GB: not verified in
> print]: [Kelly Hurley's] organising principle for her investigations of
> these texts is "the abhuman," a term she borrows from the horror writer
> William Hope Hodgson to denote the possibilities of "the ruination of
> traditional constructs of human identity."
>
> 2000 Michelle A. Masse' in David Punter, ed. _A Companion to the Gothic_
> (Oxford: Blackwell) 240: By foregrounding the loss of all boundaries, or
> dissolution into the abhuman, Hurley addresses issues of race and
> masculinity in the Gothic that evidence themselves as 'hysterical nausea.'
>
> It sort of means "no longer fully, significantly, or recognizably human."
>
> JL
>
>
>
> ' --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
>
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