Conclusion

Summary

Appalachia has played a critical role in the growth and progress of the national economy, but its gothic literature demands pause, time to question the costs of a relentless pursuit of growth, from the forced removal of Indigenous people to slavery, and from coal mining to the climate crisis. Of course, the climate crisis is arguably the most existential threat, and pushing beyond the term Anthropocene, Botting coins the term “Monstrocene” to encompass the human and non-human terrors and horrors of the climate crisis. Yet Botting cautions against the pitfalls of dark ecology and a tendency to frame the climate crisis in purely monstrous terms, concerned that climate monsters may “only serve to horrify and paralyze all thought, all imagination, all response.” However, in a region rendered monstrous in the popular imagination, Appalachian authors must turn to the monstrous, not to “paralyze,” but to expose the monster for what it really is and in the case of the climate crisis, the monster is partly formed by the waves of fossil fuel extraction that have wreaked destruction across the region.

The critical reflections on an extractive logic across Appalachian gothic literature are a repeated refrain, a ballad about the destruction of place and the devastating costs to the humans and non-humans. Sharae Deckard reminds us “capitalism is always in search of new commodity frontiers for extraction and appropriation,” and the alternate energy demands of the green transition continue to demand extraction. The lithium required especially for “electric vehicles and battery manufacturing” means the “demand for lithium” just in the United States, “is expected to grow more than six times by […] the end of the decade.” This demand is generating a new boom in Appalachian areas rich in lithium reserves: the federal government as well as several companies are investing in battery factories and electric car plants in the region. In economically depressed communities the prospect of new jobs as part of the green transition is vital, but in a region where extraction has come at great costs to the health of the environment and residents, there are grave concerns about the destructive impacts of this latest turn to Appalachia as a natural resource to be harnessed for the greater good. The question remains about whether the green transition can approach extraction any differently, especially when it is driven largely by the private sector.