The Handbook of Horror Literature – Abstract Boundary Crossing and Cultural Creaon: Transgressive Horror and Polics While horror ﬁcon has always crossed social, cultural, and physical boundaries, this chapter explores horror ﬁcon which makes transgression into its main focus. The chapter does not deﬁne transgression as a mere gesture or problemac form of shock, but as a process which redeﬁnes boundaries, following Georges Bataille’s suggeson that “[o]rganised transgression together with the taboo makes social life what it is” (Erocism 65). Transgressive horror interacts with central social ideologies, not in an aempt to fundamentally undermine social stability, but as a crical interrogaon of socio-cultural construcons of meaning. The chapter focuses speciﬁcally on American transgressive horror of the 1990s. This decade was an important one for horror studies as an academic discipline. It led to the publicaon of several key works, many of which analysed the connecon between horror and polics (i.e. Carroll, Clover, Jancovich, Halberstam). It was also a decade during which gender and queer studies gained prominence (see Butler, Sedgwick, Bersani). Not coincidentally, transgressive horror of the period uses the body as a metaphorical space where boundaries are being transgressed, be they physical, moral, or social. The chapter explores the range of boundaries transgressive horror interrogates, including the divide between high and low culture, mind and maer, and ﬁcon and reality. The analysis discusses a range of authors and texts to oﬀer an overview of the characteriscs of transgressive horror. Many transgressive horror authors explore and transform familiar horror tropes such as the serial killer (Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho), the vampire (Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls), and the haunted house (Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves). All of them move back and forth across social, cultural, and physical boundaries, inving a conceptualizaon of transgressive horror as a constantly transforming genre. However, the chapter also idenﬁes common themes and consideraons: an emphasis on the body as a metaphor, an analysis of gender and sexuality as social construcons, and a connecon between mainstream and margins. More than many other types of horror ﬁcon, transgressive horror is a polical form of ﬁcon which reﬂects and interrogates the ideas and ideologies of its extra-textual context.