Scream: the sound of the monstrous

摘要

What does the monstrous sound like? Using the case of Living TV's Most Haunted, a paranormal investigative show that brings together a team of believers, sceptics and undecided, I want to articulate an answer to this question by drawing upon literatures from feminist psychoanalysis, performance and media studies that address the nature of screaming. Specifically, I emphasize how the scream has functioned as a focal point for both the 'monstrous-feminine', a body of work that dwells on the morbidly maternal and male anxieties thereof, and a 'post'human reading of subjectivities as 'becoming' abject or grotesque. The horror of Most Haunted, I suggest, ensued from the explicit suturing of these two monstrous forms, manifest within the performances of its investigative team. I conclude by asking: What is the import of this suturing, and subsequent sundering, for a feminist teratology?