General

It is perhaps a sign of the times we live in that there is an increased academic interest in weirdness, hybridity, and monstrosity. Just recently a colleague of mine from the English Department here at the University of Virginia mentioned in a casual conversation that he’s been drafting a syllabus for his new course entitled ‘Weird’. Noticing my surprise, he patiently introduced me to the world of Weirdcore literature (‘Think Lovecraft on steroids minus racism and xenophobia’), and aesthetics (‘Norm violating hybridity is the key, representations of human-mushroom bodies, rainbows with eyes, fish with human feet, surrealism meets low resolution anime and 80s video games graphics, basically’). The reason why Weirdcore is popular among Zoomers (the generation born between 1997 and 2012) became clearer to me after a while. What more suitable recourse does this brilliant (judging by my UVa students) generation of digital natives have, having been raised in a politically, environmentally. and economically volatile world, but to embrace the incongruity and celebrate the absurd?