Horror Theory
Horror & trauma Studies
Horror theory is a framework for a trauma-informed approach to design practice and pedagogy. It is rooted in validating the emotional complexity of contemporary social and ecological grief that comes from experiencing reoccurring loss. The theory aims to provide mechanisms through design to force confrontations with difficult realities. These confrontations assist with processing uncomfortable truths and coping with the feelings of "transcendental shock" and "cognitive estrangement" that accompany the feelings of facing uncertain futures (Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, 2016).
Horror theory is devoted to those who find themselves walking between two (irreconcilable) worlds: one of hope and another where options for meaningful repair slip away. In acknowledgment of the warnings offered in Gothic literature and the sci-fi genre, Horror theory seeks new paths for the affected collective (of griefbearers) to usher in new practices to decode our nervous systems as we understand the risk of not doing and having humanity repeat atrocities of social and environmental harm in future generations...
Presented at ACSA Inflexiones 28 June 2024.
Publications
[1] "Horror Theory." ACSA Inflexiones 2024 Conference Proceedings. 14 July 2024.
[2] "Producing Horror." Unpublished Manuscript.
[3] "Disrupting Complicity." Unpublished Manuscript.
[4] "Aesthetics of Coloniality." to be presented at ASEH 2025. April 2025.
[5] "Rebuilding Landscapes, Rebuilding Selves." to be presented at ARCC 2025. April 2025.
[6] "Walking Between Two Worlds." [in review]
[7] "Healing Futures: Trauma-Informed Environmental Stewardship for Combating Grief." [Unpublished Manuscript]
[1] Horror Theory: Landscapes and Loss
Abstract
This paper introduces a new definition of horror for use in the design disciplines. Rather than deploy the tropes of horror to arouse a sense of thrill and theatrics, the new model adopts a framework of confrontation to address and validate the difficulty of realities concealed by convenient fictions. When used as a design strategy, confrontations with social and environmental horror can effectively reveal the harms masked by complicit ideologies. The techniques discussed in this paper use the storytelling devices of horror and its aesthetic repertoire to expose the layers of artifice that hide evidence of harm in our everyday lives.
Confronting Horror: A Manifesto
Rather than continue “perpetuating the fiction that everything will be fine” as James Billingsley has argued against, this manifesto aims to help people cope with the loss of the world as they have known it. The following theory and pedagogical model argues for the deployment of the fictional genre of horror as a methodology for “decoding our nervous systems” from harmful social and environmental practices through the creation of confrontational projects in architecture and landscape. This is accomplished by retooling methods of fiction for use in architectural design. By raising consciousness of worldly horrors, this framework for design aims to increase the field’s visibility as an instrument of cultural transformation, making it more useful to social and environmental justice movements. By interfacing with horror, architecture can inspire a new paradigm of participation with the world’s social and ecological systems.
The following manifesto serves as an abbreviated guide for those navigating the experience of walking between two (irreconcilable) worlds: an experience many of us are facing in the midst of inhabiting current social and environmental traumas. This manifesto aims to provide stepping stones to help people cope with the loss of a familiar world, while stepping into the unknown. Horror Theory is based on four key propositions:
1. Fiction defines landscapes. Landscapes exist in cultural consciousness as idealized fictions, detached from the (very real) horrific qualities of their social, cultural, and material realities (including toxicity, violence, and harm).
2. Landscapes are “stuck in reverse.” Landscapes and the environment are not allowed to have futures that differ from the ideals of their fictionalized pasts. Environmental practices remain shielded from past traumas and continue to avoid confronting the horrifying dimensions of human and environmental experiences of the present. They practices also eschew the idea that horrors may ensue in the future. Instead opting for sunny images of an untroubled utopia.
3. Confronting horror raises the stakes. Architecture can use horror to unpack and reveal the atrocities of current social and environmental realities. Confronting real-life atrocities through architecture allows the field to become a useful tool for cultural critique. And when deployed in practice, confronting horror transforms architecture into a device skilled at revealing social and environmental truths, and a tool of further social-cultural production.
4. Horror is generative. Horror accompanies irreversible confrontations with terrifying, but often ignored, truths. Horror generates confrontations with distressing truths.
Purpose: This paper defines the theoretical framework of Horror Theory. It outlines how to integrate lessons from horror into architectural practice and pedagogy. A case study project by thesis student, Megan Ung (2024), about a trauma-informed design for the towns of Okuma and Futaba in the Fukushima Daichi fallout zone is discussed.
[2] Producing Horror: Reanimating Architecture's Cultural Capacity through Techniques of Horror
Abstract
This paper proposes the creation of a new architectural paradigm derived from the horror genre. As the ineffable horrors of the world continue to magnify, there is no doubt that widespread repair is an absolute necessity. However, to undertake projects of repair, we must first understand what it is we are trying to mend. Techniques from horror may be leveraged for their ability to do precisely that: to reveal what needs mending by drawing attention to the layers of artifice and misinformation that work to conceal horrific evidence of harm from our everyday.
Horror contains a distinct ability to confront false preconceptions and representations about the world, our relation to the environment, and one another. The raw honesty that unfeigned horror is able to draw out of situations, events, and histories allows for a nuanced view from which to confront deep-seated illusions and misleading ideologies, such as: how goods are produced, the ongoing destruction of the environment, and how lives are impacted by war. Horror's promise lies not only in its revelatory power but also in its ability to challenge the root causes of the harm and violence done to humans and countless other species in these social-cultural and environmental contexts.
Methods developed in this paper discuss how to: 1) unpack and reveal the ideals that uphold and conceal the horrors created by oppressive social and environmental realities, and 2) generate discipline-specific approaches for confronting these deep-seated delusions.
Case studies from a recent thesis cohort illustrate how methods from horror can be deployed in design. The results of these exercises force a confrontation with uncomfortable truths about the discipline, and state of the world, and aim to reorient architecture towards helping us develop a deeper understanding of current conditions so that we can reach new levels of empathy and understanding for a better future.
For instance, the projects address "violations of reality," those being: transgressions of human and environmental ethics that complicit, albeit status-quo, views—about how reality, social relations, politics, culture, or environments—operate from, and in doing so, effectively disguise harm. Examples of conventions that describe the “vectors of violation,” include: "infection" (coming from the outside-in; infections of nature) and "corruption" (coming from within; corruptions of culture, for instance). Finally, the methods presented in the paper address the new role/s and importance of aesthetics as it facilitates in the confrontation of artifice and the harms of erasure.
Themes of horror have proven successful in capturing wide audiences in film and literature. Building on this recognition, this paper explores how to further problematize fiction's role in architecture for asserting the field’s importance as a cultural medium; and argues that architecture operate in crucial new modes to support the social, cultural, and political shifts necessary for repair in our time. By interfacing with horror, architecture can generate original, discipline-specific approaches to confront the difficulties of our current reality, and inspire a new paradigm of participation with the world's social and ecological systems.
[3] Disrupting Complicity: Techniques of Horror in Architecture for Confronting Social and Environmental Harms
Abstract
Acts of horror are arguably the norm by which we operate in—and on—the world. This includes the crimes of inhumanity and ecocide that are evident in everything humans do, from how goods are produced, the ongoing destruction of the environment, and how others’ lives are impacted by war and injustice. However, artifice and misinformation mask evidence of these acts of horror from the everyday, and from the production and aesthetic experience of architecture and landscapes. Furthermore, there is an overwhelming trend towards resolute complicity, a position from which many people operate in the world, which in turn invalidates and further entrenches the pain of those who are affected by its violence and harm. Ultimately, the complicity, apathy, and willful ignorance of the first group are at the roots of contemporaneous social and environmental traumas, especially for being incapable of access or validating the pain of others. It is problematic that the discipline of architecture has yet to engage with trauma-informed practice and continues to obfuscate its contributions to ongoing social and environmental horrors.
It may seem counterintuitive to confront the aforementioned traumas with techniques of horror, but the subgenre (of horror) is distinct for its ability to address and confront false representations of the world, the environment, and one another; and is uniquely adept at portraying and validating complicated human emotions and experiences. Techniques from the horror genre that consistently confront the horrific include: presenting violations of reality, posing ethical dilemmas, and grappling with the psychological limits of human perception and reasoning (by inducing ontological and existential paralysis).
This paper examines how the genre of horror can transform architecture into a device which disrupts apathy about social and environmental harms. Taken further, the methodology explores the intersections of practices that confront both: horror and its concealment and aim to heal the traumas that result from these violations. Ultimately, the work is intended to help people cope with the malaise that comes with reoccurring loss. The application of this theory leverages techniques from the horror genre to transform practices of architecture and landscape architecture; and the framework is deployed to help people navigate the destabilizing experience of walking between two (irreconcilable) worlds: one clinging onto hope and another of acknowledging and confronting loss—an existential crisis that paralyzes us in trauma and is a defining feature of our current reality. By raising consciousness about worldly horrors and developing methods for tackling complex trauma through validation and visual techniques, this framework for the design disciplines aims to increase the field’s visibility as an instrument of cultural transformation, making it more useful to social and environmental justice movements.
Purpose: This paper explicates on techniques lifted from literary and cinematic horror for use in design. The paper explores these techniques for their ability to expand design's capacity for repair. Horror is used for its ability to unmask false facades so that we can better see what is most in need of repair. This is accomplished through a close analysis of politics, power dynamics, rhetoric, and industrial materials (re: McLuhan's claims that the "medium is the message"). Techniques from horror search for and uncover the "monsters" that may be hiding in plain sight or unmask those we wish to not, or refuse, to see.
References
Arroyo, Alexander, and Pierre Belanger. Ecologies of Power. MIT Press, 2016.
Baudrillard, Jean, and Sheila Faria Glaser. Simulacra and Simulation. English 1st Ed. University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Belanger, Pierre. Extraction Empire. MIT Press, 2018.
Billingsley, James. "Aesthetics." in The Landscape Project, 2022.
Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness.” in Uncommon Ground, W.W. Norton & Co., 1996.
Demos, TJ. Against the Anthropocene. Sternberg Press, 2017.
—- Beyond the World’s End. Duke University Press, 2020.
Esmail, Sam, et al. Leave the World Behind. Netflix. 2023.
Fisher, Mark. The Weird and the Eerie. Repeater, 2016.
Fleming, Billy. "Politics." in The Landscape Project, 2022.
Herrington, Susan. On Landscapes. Routledge, 2009.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions, 2013.
Mathur, Anuradha. “Terrains of Wetness.” in Christophe Girot, et al., eds., Delta Dialogues, gta Verlag. 2017.
Peele, Jordan, et al. Get Out. Universal Pictures, 2017.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State. Yale University Press, 1999.
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador, 2004.
Žižek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. Verso, 2010.
Purpose: This paper further explains the connections between horror, architecture, and trauma. Specifically, the paper aims to establish how to integrate trauma-informed practices into architectural practice and pedagogy. The trauma-informed approaches studied in this paper deal with situations and contexts where things cannot be undone. How do we cope with the pains, fears, and disempowerment that come with intractable realities? How do we manage in these circumstances? The trauma-informed positionality examines existing coping mechanisms in these conditions. It considers the various methods of coping with what cannot be undone, and looks to how these diverse coping mechanisms interface with the design disciplines. The aim is to amplify the need for understanding coping mechanisms and the actions needed for profound healing of the human emotional condition, in order to change architectural practice--this being: the purpose of building and the purpose of architecture itself. In effect, the paper aims to question our ability to reposition architecture as a mechanism that can be used to help people cope in conditions where what has been experienced, or what has transpired cannot be undone.
[4] Aesthetics of Coloniality: Concealing Horror in Historical Imagery
Abstract
This paper investigates how emotional biases and empathetic depictions of history shape public perception, examining the impacts of emotion and empathy on how historical information is both visualized and received.
Photographs of figures that pose in front of modest farmhouses during the American homesteading movement are notoriously expressionless and neutral. While this may be attributed to photographic processes, the portraits’ mood contrasts starkly with the social and environmental realities encompassing American landscapes at the time.
While settlers posed for these photos, indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from their homes and driven to inhospitable reservations, landscapes were marred with bodies of Civil War soldiers, and freedmen and women undertook lengthy, dangerous migrations out of the South, facing new forms of adversity in northern industrial cities. Environmentally, homesteading entailed the decimation of native forests, grasslands, prairies, and ecosystems.
Photographs of this genre are but one visual medium complicit in oversimplifications of the past that obscure such events. Others that contribute to representing the emotionless neutrality of the past include paintings and “living” sites of historical reenactment, such as the Stagville and Vance plantations in North Carolina, New Bedford (NY) and Old Sturbridge Village (MA).
Drawing from visual representations of reenactment and memorialization, the paper presents alternate cases of narratives that explicitly include emotional biases and empathic perspectives in describing the past. Specifically, the paper unpacks History Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre exhibit, which deliberately provides a counterargument to “neutral” expressions of history in favor of emotionally charged interpretations; examining how these methods engage with the colonialism and erasure in which supposedly straightforward representations of homesteaders were portrayed. This paper challenges emotionless portrayals of the past to better understand the complex events that shaped our present and to counteract the indifference caused by histories that ignore the role of emotion.