Abjection of the Other in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend: The Subject’s Deterrence Strategy for Becoming the Abject

Hossein Mohseni

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.13.24

Authors

Hossein Mohseni Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0509-7959

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.13.24

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Keywords:

legend, Matheson, vampires, Kristeva, abject

Abstract

Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954) is about the volatile relationship between Robert Neville—the sole survivor of the human race—and vampires as the members of a brave new world order. While many critics tend to read the relationship between Robert and the vampires as the colonizer and the colonized, this article sees the need to devise a paradigm to acknowledge the critical merits of all these postcolonial and racial readings without overemphasizing the validity of any of the mentioned readings at the expense of the other. The paradigm shows the journey of a subject who initially thought that he is in absolute control, but later is made to realize that, in his insistence on this position, he is actually being swayed towards marginalization and abjection. At the same time, the initially abject and marginalized vampires assume the position of dominance and normalcy at the end of the novel. In order to reach this understanding, the study draws on Julia Kristeva’s theoretical conceptualization of abjection.

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Author Biography

Hossein Mohseni, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran

Hossein Mohseni is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Iran, where he also completed his BA, MA and PhD in the same field. His PhD dissertation is entitled “City Spaces in Cyberpunk Fiction.” He has published in journals such as American and British Studies Annual, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture, Journal of Literary Studies, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. His interests include science fiction, literary theory and criticism, modern drama, and the relationship between literature and media.

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