A gripping exploration of belief in the impossible through horror film, informed by philosophy, history, and anthropology.

What if aliens crash-landed at an old mine? What if you discovered your spouse is protecting you from witchcraft? What if you received messages from the dead? You wouldn’t believe it, of course—but you might investigate. As Christopher Bracken shows through this gripping exploration of the horror film, this is the first step toward believing the impossible.

In Believable Impossibilities, Bracken examines the genre in which we are most frequently called on to believe something seemingly impossible has unsettled our ordinary lives—the horror story. Whether on the page or on screen, horror draws us into narratives in which a community of nonbelievers are suddenly confronted with the challenge of believing in events and experiences that radically break with expectation. As Bracken argues, questions of belief often intersect with issues of race and Indigeneity because, historically, belief in the impossible has been racially coded as a trait of “primitive” thought. Drawing on philosophy, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, Bracken explores the fictional spaces in which the paranormal and supernatural challenge and defy our social bonds.

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“Bracken powerfully traces the human drama of belief across philosophy, anthropology, literature, and film. In doing so, he offers compelling and engaging readings of films, as well as fascinating and fresh accounts of work by Wittgenstein, Lévi-Strauss, Freud, Peirce, Taussig, Lévy-Bruhl, and many others.”

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“Believable Impossibilities is an original, distinctive work of scholarship that offers both a philosophic and cultural investigation into the question of belief. It will be of serious interest to students and specialists of anthropology, critical theory, horror movies, or colonialism.”