Weird Horizons and the Mysticism of the Unhuman in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that the New Weird Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer is highly attuned to the difficulty of processing and representing extreme alterity. Its particular focus is his Southern Reach trilogy and the forms of weird encounter it describes. The article proposes a ‘mysticism of the unhuman’, and explains why it pertains to the encounters depicted in VanderMeer’s texts. It explores the instances of mystical annihilation that feature in the trilogy, an analysis that evolves into a discussion of the relationship between mysticism and horror. This leads into a discussion of linguistic representation, suggesting that approaches by philosophers of language and natural theologians to certain paradoxes surrounding ineffability can illuminate aspects of VanderMeer’s mythos. Although aspects of VanderMeer’s ‘Area X’ may escape human language and cognition, it is nevertheless able to convey information about itself. In exploring how this transmission occurs, the article turns to the notion of recognition, circling back to earlier discussions by asking whether an annihilation of alterity is required for linguistically incompatible beings to recognise one another. The article concludes that VanderMeer answers this question affirmatively, but that his stance is not necessarily pessimistic with regard to the possibility of establishing recognition between human and unhuman inhabitants of Earth.