THE SCIENTIZATION OF GOTHIC SPACES: CHARTING THE UNCANNY POTENTIAL OF ATAVISM AND DEGENERATION THEORY IN SHERLOCK HOLMES’S LONDON

An analysis of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmesian Canon in the light of the scientific theorizations of his time is here proposed, aimed at highlighting how they shape the use of Gothic spatial tropes in the representation of London. The city, seen in its double capacity of capital of the Empire and positivistic rational environment, is internally disrupted in many of its facets, from the microcosm of the house, to the urban fabric, to the composition of its social body. Introduced by deviant individuals or polluting substances, the atavistic or degenerative threat invades the metropolis, materializing the anxieties underlying the late Victorian psyche: the persistence of the past in the present, and the possibility of reversion. The detective, armed with the tools that rationality and the scientific method itself offer, is tasked with the almost impossible duty of fighting Nature with its own means: his taxonomical organization of London is the ultimate attempt at normalising what eschews categorisation. Yet in so doing, he also reveals the contradictions and disruptions of the society he is trying to protect, effectively disclosing the very items it wishes to repress.