Both victimizer and victim : Terror and the feminine sublime in American Psycho and Fight Club

Terror and the sublime have been linked in theoretical material by numerous academics, including notable sublime theorists Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Barbara Freeman. In the traditional sublime theories of Burke and Kant, terror is experienced at a distance, and it is precisely this distance which facilitates the sublime emotion. However, instances of contemporary American fiction indicate a rejection of this separating distance: they portray characters who desire to be participants in, and facilitators of, terror, thus aligning closely with the feminine sublime theory that Freeman champions. This chapter will explore, specifically, how the protagonists of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) explore manifestations of Freeman’s feminine sublime through their dual role of violator and victim of the terror they perpetuate in the novels. While a notable amount of violent, frightening, or Gothic literature portrays a world in which a monstrous anomaly disrupts an otherwise normal society, American Psycho and Fight Club refute this tradition with examples of inherently unstable, frightening, and terrible environments in which they are willing participants. Considering this, this chapter will argue that American Psycho and Fight Club indicate not only a sublime experience with the application of terror in the novels but also that it is through this application that the specific feminine sublime manifests itself – the protagonists of each novel demonstrate the desire to be victims of the very terror they are perpetuating, suggesting a rejection of the distance that defines the traditional sublime formula.