Towards a Poetics of Weird Biology: Strange Lives of Nonhuman Organisms in Literature

• Published in: Pulse (Budapest) Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 1 - 22
• Main Author: Bradić, Marijeta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Central European University 2019
• Subjects: Philosophy of Science; Studies of Literature; Theory of Literature; weird fiction; plant studies; weird biology; animal studies
• ISSN: 2416-111X

This article tackles the concept of “weird biology,” which designates representations of specific nonhuman life forms in speculative fiction. Within the wider category of speculative fiction, there is a large number of literary works aiming to evoke what some cultural theorists named the weird. The umbrella term for these works is weird fiction. This growing body of work has often been analyzed in its socio-political context, thereby neglecting one of the most important aspects of weird storyworld building – the environment or, more precisely, the nonhuman domain. This article will develop further the idea that particular natural phenomena and entities evoke a sense of the weird. Given that the setting of weird fiction is often composed of animals radically different from humans, such as marine invertebrates, mushrooms, lichen, mold, as well as slime mold, and various strange looking plant species, such as ferns, moss and vines, these organisms will therefore be of particular interest to us. Based on their extraordinary sensory-motor abilities, unusual habitats or feeding and reproductive habits, they are often described as “weird” in everyday language. This article will attempt to explore how they fit into Mark Fisher’s conception of the weird, and also to highlight the importance of animal and critical plant studies in the analysis of such texts.