Extreme horror fiction and the neoliberalism of the 1980s: Splatterpunk, radical art, and the killing of the collective society

Splatterpunk was a short-lived, but explosive horror literary movement birthed in the 1980’s that utilized graphic depictions of violence in its prose. Drawing parallels to other subversive and radical art movements like Dada and Hardcore Punk, this paper examines through a Marxist lens how Splatterpunk, influenced by the destructive nature of 1980’s neoliberalism, reflected the violence, categorized as direct and structural, of its period of creation and used extreme vulgarity as an act of rebellion against traditional horror canon.