"In Believable Impossibilities, wide-ranging scholar Christopher Bracken provides a gripping exploration of belief in the impossible informed by philosophy, history, and anthropology. In particular, the book focuses on what Bracken understands as the racialization of belief in the impossible, which, he contends, has historically been coded as "primitive." To analyze this phenomenon and its ramifications, he explores an unexpected corpus-horror stories, and especially horror film-as the fictional space wherein we are not just free to believe the impossible, but actively encouraged to do so. As Bracken shows, horror films are full of talk about belief, encapsulated in oft-repeated utterances: "Believe me." "You have to believe me." "Youll never believe me." Anchored on close readings of these films read along various thinkers-Derrida, Freud, Hume, Peirce, and many more-the book argues that horror stories represent the ritual breaching of epistemological contracts. Bracken also extends his analyses to other cases such as legal testimonies, suspicion toward Indigenous beliefs, and paranormal phenomena, painting a complex portrait of how they have troubled our conceptual schema.

In a time of rampant distrust and widespread mutual disbelief, this book makes for bracing reading"--.