Predatory Institutional Gothic: A Manifesto and Comparative Taxonomy of Institutionalized Predation
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This conceptual theory article formally establishes Predatory Institutional Gothic as a literary field in which predation becomes durable through institutions, professions, families, architecture, archives, rituals, classifications, technologies, and systems of dependency. It distinguishes the field from conventional Gothic fiction, medical Gothic, organizational Gothic, institutional betrayal, structural violence, dystopia, supernatural-monster narratives, and individual-centered dark leadership. The article defines the Predatory Institution Threshold and develops the Predatory Conversion Chain, through which vulnerability becomes authorized access, access becomes dependency, dependency becomes extraction, and extraction is concealed, normalized, inherited, or automated. It identifies mechanisms including medicalized possession, architectural confinement, archival erasure, categorical capture, professional complicity, responsibility dissolution, technological scaling, and predatory succession. The framework connects Predatory Institutional Gothic with Mythotechnic Fiction, Post-Personal Dark Leadership, Classification Sovereignty, Ethical Reopening, and machine institutions. It concludes that the defining horror is not merely the survival of the monster, but the institutional preservation of its capacity to feed after it is gone.
Author: Martinez, Francisco M.
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7170048269