Inside Killjoy’s Kastle: Dykey Ghosts, Feminist Monsters, and Other Lesbian Hauntings
Edited by Allyson Mitchell and Cait McKinney

Hundreds of years of ridicule, persecution, erasure, misunderstanding, and institutionalization could put anyone in a bad mood. Killjoy invites you into her kastle for a queer exorcism and celebration of the past.

Lesbian feminist histories can have a haunting effect on the present. This book explores the making and experience of Killjoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House, an immersive walk-through installation and performance artwork (by Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue) that materializes the frightfully acrimonious past for today. Inspired by Evangelical Christian hell houses, the exhibition has been staged in three cities so far – Toronto, London, and Los Angeles – inviting visitors to interact with humorous and frightening manifestations of the spirits that haunt feminist and queer history.

Whereas traditional hell houses set out to scare and convert, Killjoy’s Kastle cheekily aims to provoke and pervert. The humorous and costumed characters in the kastle – including polyamorous vampiric grannies, a demented women’s studies professor, and lesbian zombie folksingers – give expression to old and new anxieties, creating a space for critique, affect, and discussion. Inside Killjoy’s Kastle fills this space by exploring the kastle’s theoretical and political legacies in chapters by queer and feminist scholars and in vignettes by artists who participated in the project. The many colourful photos in the book also bring Killjoy’s Kastle to life, offering an important visual context.

Taking the Kastle as a starting point, the contributors to this volume consider the role of lesbian feminist histories and direct-action aesthetics in contemporary queer and feminist communities, particularly the ways in which political artwork can produce new ways of knowing about the past.