Med utgångspunkt i Mark Fishers bok The Weird and the Eerie (2016) och ett kritiskt engagemang med den spekulativa realismens återkoppling till det konstiga och det kusligas estetik, avses en formulering av det konstiga och det kusliga som distinkta litterära modus och undersökning av den amerikanska författaren Jeff VanderMeers Southern Reach-trilogi. Jeff VanderMeers konstiga och kusliga berättande som social symbolhandling, som tolkad genom Fredric Jamesons marxistiska hermeneutik, kan karaktäriseras som en defeatism inför klimatkrisen som existentiell kris.

Nyckelord: Jeff VanderMeer, Mark Fisher, litterära modus, existensmodus, spekulativ realism, objektorienterad ontologi (OOO), det konstiga, det kusliga, unheimlich.

Mark Fisher’s TheWeird and the Eerie (2016) is a account of the weird and the eerie as modes ofliterature and ultimately modes of being; once de-coupled from behind unheimlich, Fisher presents an argument for the weird and the eerie as distinct modes of literature, modes of film, and modes of being. The purpose of this study is the formulation and consequent application of the weird and the eerie as modes of literature on the American author Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach-trilogy, published 2014. The discussion on what the eerie and the weird entail in regard to them tentatively being modes of being, is a critical engagement with the philosophy of speculative realism and with object-oriented ontology (OOO). I claim that Jeff VanderMeer’s weird fiction in the Southern Reach-trilogy is a weird form of defeatism that stems from the object-oriented ontology of thephilosophy of speculative realism.

Key words: Jeff VanderMeer, Southern Reach-trilogy, Mark Fisher, modes of literature, modes ofbeing, unheimlich, the weird, the eerie.