The Politics of Weird and the Weirdness of Politics

Online Conference

November 2, 2024

           The vibe shift among the Democratic base since President Biden announced he would not seek reelection has been remarkable: apathy and anxiety have morphed into enthusiasm and a newfound pugnacious spirit. Stumping for Vice-President Kamala Harris, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Harris’ vice-presidential pick, launched the verbal missile which has revitalized the campaign’s messaging and sought to define Republicans in succinct, yet devastating terms: they’re weird.

            Weird has set the internet afire, a testament to the power of this deceivingly simple and relatable term. It comes after decades of conservative aspersions against women, people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and left-leaning individuals, and in the wake of more recent demonization campaigns against migrants pouring in from “prisons and insane asylums” (bizarrely spearheaded by the fictional Hannibal Lecter), “radical Marxists,” and “childless cat ladies,” among others. As HP Lovecraft points out in the opening of his seminal essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” “[t]he oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” (Lovecraft 1973: 12). Fear of the unknown permeates conservative anxieties and determines what this group brands as weird. According to this logic, Kamala Harris is, indeed, weird, with her South Asian and Black hybrid identity, her relentless political ascent as a woman, and her status as a stepmother. To much of America, however, with its recent immigrant heritage, racial diversity, patchwork of genders and sexual orientations, and various family configurations, she is reassuringly normal, albeit exceptional in her achievements. So, what, then, is the weird Democrats are talking about?

            Mark Fisher, in the introduction to his 2016 book The Weird and the Eerie, defines the weird as “that which does not belong. The weird brings to the familiar something which ordinarily lies beyond it, and which cannot be reconciled with the “homely” (even as its negation)” (Fisher 2016: 10, original emphasis). What is the “homely” that Democrats and moderate Republicans recognize in the Harris/Walz ticket? What is it “that does not belong” in terms of the Trump/Vance ticket and MAGA surrogates, messaging, and policies? What has been fueling the success of the weird messaging?

            In our pre-election online conference, we would like to explore the facets of weird in contemporary American politics. We invite 20-minute papers from a variety of fields (American studies, linguistics, journalism and media studies, cultural studies, literature, etc.) which engage with the definitions and manifestations of weird in the context of the 2024 presidential campaign.

Possible topics include (but are not restricted to):

• the ways in which American political discourse constructs and deconstructs the idea of “weird”
• exploring how the term “weird” has been employed (and deployed) by the Harris/Walz campaign
• the role of social media in amplifying both “weirdness” and reactions to it
• responses by the Trump/Vance campaign
• analyzing instances of “weirdness” in various political campaigns (presidential or down-ballot) – ads, speeches, printed materials
• intersectional identities and “weirdness”
• fictional characters and pop culture references
• the crossover between fictional “weirdness” and real-world politics
• Project 2025/Agenda 47 and “weirdness”

Paper proposals should include:

• full name
• institutional affiliation
• email address
• abstract (250 words)
• bio-note (100 words)

Please send proposals to weirdconference@gmail.com by September 30, 2024.