Defined by Mark Fisher as, > '*The concept of weirdness as an 'outside' space that 'lies beyond standard perception, cognition, and experience.'* - Elvia Wilk, [[Wilk, Elvia (2022) Death By Landscape]] A weird event is one that you witness and yet it cannot be explained by the structures and knowledge that we have today. Even describing it might not be enough to share with another what was seen. > *'Eeriness often accompanies weirdness, but it is more "tied up with questions of agency," present in moments of undefined causality and confusing animacy.'* [[Wilk, Elvia (2022) Death By Landscape]] [[Eeriness]] Weird stories, displace the human. They displace the solid ideas of power and agency over something else. They tell us that we cannot rule over or objectify that which we thought we always would. #literaryforms H.P. Lovecraft used moments of weird in his stories when he hinted that human existence is finite and maybe even insignificant when it comes the enormity of the universe. But he also wrote books that were sexist, xenophobic, and racist. #literature [[Western Literary Forms]] > 'Certain marginalized bodies have historically been designated weird in the negative sense, historically aligned with the "outside," the freaky, the abnormal, the exotic.' - Elvia Wilk [[Wilk, Elvia (2022) Death By Landscape]] New Weird, attempts to flip this trend by taking up old weirds ideas with an ecological twist. See: [[Eco-horror]] What is weird depends on who you are and the types of privilege you hold. Your biases, bigotries, and opportunities. >*'On the contrary, it's about seeing people as always already plant, plant as always already human, and those distinctions as always already weird. Weirdness resists the idea that everything can be explained by humans, but doesn't give up on the importance of human experience and ability to access and affect the world.'* - Elvia Wilk [[Wilk, Elvia (2022) Death By Landscape]] ## Sources: - [[Wilk, Elvia (2022) Death By Landscape]] - [[New Weird]] -