ABSTRACT
External systems of authority are forms of disguised violence, comparable to gothic demonic possession, invasions of our privacy and individuality. For William Godwin, Edmund Burke was the defender of old systems of gothic tyranny, which supported ‘the influence of superstitious awe’ that is ‘a cloak for oppression’. Political Justice thus counters Burke’s depiction of an ideal medieval world through a turn to an equally ideal future in which the gothic systems Burke reveres have completely dissolved. Godwin’s creation of a domestic gothic claims the gothic’s critical potential for a revolutionary attempt to dismantle old systems of oppression and recover a tradition of freedom. By drawing upon the gothic form for this purpose, Godwin suggests a way of achieving such a revolution by turning his enemies’ own weapons, mystery and suspense, against them. The philosophy of enlightenment was seen suspiciously as a duplicitous veil hiding satanic forces of darkness, and philosophy itself as a gothic enterprise.
