Haunting vs. Material
There have been arguments and critque against previous Gothic scholarship in that its focus on ghosts, spectrality, memory, and hautings tend to depoliticize the colonial violence.
There has been a marked influence of social materialism in Gothic Studies giving rise to more posthuman influences which decenter the human aspect and look at entanglements of human and non-human actants. Additionally, it has also sought to include atmosphere and affect as material for cultural debate. A newer decolonial gothic frame work has developed that seeks to highlight colonialism as ongoing (neocolonial), that precarity is material, and that race and captalism remain structurally active.
(see Duncan, 2022)