Greve J., Zappe F. (ed.) The American Weird: Concept and Medium

London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. — viii, 264 p. — ISBN 978-1-3501-4119-3, 978-1-3501-8538-8.Hitherto classified as a form of genre fiction, or as a particular aesthetic quality of literature by H. P. Lovecraft, the weird has now come to refer to a broad spectrum of artistic practices and expressions including fiction, film, television, photography, music, and visual and performance art. Largely under-theorized so far, The American Weird brings together perspectives from literary, cultural, media and film studies, and from philosophy, to provide a thorough exploration of the weird mode. Separated into two sections – the first exploring the concept of the weird and the second how it is applied through various media – this book generates new approaches to fundamental questions: Can the weird be conceptualized as a generic category, as an aesthetic mode or as an epistemological position? May the weird be thought through in similar ways to what Sianne Ngai calls the zany, the cute, and the interesting? What are the transformations it has undergone aesthetically and politically since its inception in the early twentieth century? Which strands of contemporary critical theory and philosophy have engaged in a dialogue with the discourses of and on the weird? And what is specifically “American” about this aesthetic mode?
As the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of the weird, this book not only explores the writings of Lovecraft, Caitlín Kiernan, China Miéville, and Jeff VanderMeer, but also the graphic novels of Alan Moore, the music of Captain Beefheart, the television show Twin Peaks and the films of Lily Amirpour, Matthew Barney, David Lynch, and Jordan Peele.Introduction: Conceptualizations, Mediations, and Remediations of the American Weird. Julius Greve and Florian Zappe.
Concept.
A Doxa of the American Weird. Dan O’Hara.
The Oozy Set: Toward a Weird(ed) Taxonomy. Johnny Murray.
Validating Weird Fiction as an (Im)Possible Genre. Anne-Maree Wicks.
Woke Weird and the Cultural Politics of Camp Transformation. Stephen Shapiro.
The Weird in/of Crisis, 1930/2010. Tim Lanzendörfer.
After Weird: Harman, Deleuze, and the American “Thing”. Daniel D. Fineman.
Concerning a Deleuzean Weird: A Response to Dan Fineman. Graham Harman.
Medium.
Get Out, Race, and Formal Destiny (On Common Weirdness). Eugenie Brinkema.
From a Heap of Broken Images Toward a Postcolonial Weird: Ana Lily Amirpour’s Western Landscapes. Maryam Aras.
“It Is in Our House Now”: Twin Peaks, Nostalgia, and David Lynch’s Weird Spaces. Oliver Moisich and Markus Wierschem.
Demolishing the Blues: Captain Beefheart as Modernist Outsider. Paul Sheehan.
Weird Visual Mythopoeia: On Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle. Florian Zappe.
Hidden Cultures and the Representation and Creation of Weird Reality in Alan Moore’s Providence. Alexander Greiffenstern.
Alien Beauty: The Glamor of the Eerie. Fred Francis.
Conspiracy Hermeneutics: The Secret World as Weird Tale. Tanya Krzywinska.
Afterword: Weird in the Walls. Roger Luckhurst.
Contributors.
Index.