“Civilised society doesn’t just happen”:

The Animal, the Law and ‘Victorian Values’ in Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula

Abstract

Unlike other neo-Victorian texts which revisit the Ripper murders, Kim Newman’s 1992 novel Anno Dracula has been largely overlooked. This article reads Anno Dracula as a response to the politics of law and order in Thatcher’s Britain, with a focus on the expulsion of particular sub-groups considered dangerous to the physical and political health of society. With reference to recent work by Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida on biopolitics and animal life, I argue that through the figure of the animal, Anno Dracula both explores the process of exclusion which underpins Thatcher’s ideal of “civilised society”, and suggests the extent to which the violence of previous techniques for managing the life of a population persists in modern regimes of social discipline. Finally, this article also considers the contemporary significance of the invocation of ‘Victorian values’ at those moments where the boundaries of so-called civilised society are being drawn.