The gothic’s construction of evil is an empty category of pure Otherness.

Evidence

The modern gothic, in other words — whether in its rape-victim or its political-paranoid forms -depends absolutely in its central operation on the construction of evil (forms of the good are notoriously more difficult to construct, and generally draw their light from the darker concept, as though the sun drew its reflected radiance from the moon). Evil is here, however, the emptiest form of sheer Otherness (into which any type of social content can be poured at will). I have so often been taken to task for my arguments against ethics (in politics as well as in aesthetics) that it seems worth observing in passing that Otherness is a very dangerous category, one we are well off without; but fortunately, in literature and culture, it has also become a very tedious one. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 633

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the gothic’s central operation as the construction of evil understood as pure, contentless Otherness.
• XREF: Connects to Jameson’s broader anti-ethical stance, and to the modern gothic lineage from Frankenstein to contemporary horror writing. — connects to: Genuine alterity is reciprocal, whereas mythic Otherness denies reciprocity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 652