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Avian epistemologies are used to rethink monstrous survival, emphasizing tangled, nonhuman entanglements rather than human-centered planetary 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\nUniversity of Sydney  \nAbstract: Drawing on the thinking of Donna Haraway and other transdisciplinary thinkers, this paper makes the case for an ‘avian Weird’ by exploring the representation of birds in the New Weird fiction of Jeff VanderMeer . Distinct from the Lovecraftian ‘Old Weird’ of the twentieth century, the New Weird has been defined by VanderMeer himself as ‘a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy’(‘The New Weird’ 31) . However, VanderMeer’s oeuvre is also something of a textual aviary, where the avian comes to represent the entangled and monstrous ontologies ofthe‘Chthulucene’. A substitute for the human-centred ‘Anthropocene’, Donna Haraway’s‘Chthulucene’indexes the fibrous and squishy bits of the world (Staying with the Trouble) . Like Haraway, I am unsatisfied with the term‘Anthropocene’, the planetary effects of which implicate more than only human life-forms: we need new translocal, transspecies, and transbiological ways of thinking. In its chthonic and tentacular etymology, the Chthulucene gestures to the imagery of Weird worlds, as well as the tangled, twiggy body of the nest. What happens when we look at the world through avian eyes? Might these tetrachromats offer a response to Haraway’s call to ‘see the world in hues of red, green, and ultraviolet’? (‘The Promises of Monsters’ 295) In VanderMeer’s New Weird fiction, avian epistemologies reveal the possibility of monstrous survival in the Chthulucene .  \nKeywords: New Weird, Chthulucene, avian, speculative fiction, epistemology, alterity  \n‘HER BRAINS ARE ALL OVER HER BODY’  \nIn the Spring of 2021, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama filled the atrium of a Berlin gallery with pink, polka-dotted tentacles . Some viewers have criticised Gropias Bau’s retrospective of Kusama’s work for its ‘dry, didactic’ and ‘distant’ stance (Weinstock) . Yet here in the Antipodes, I can only experience ‘A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe’ from a distance: Iam instantly enamoured by these gargantuan tentacles . Seen from above, the tentacles appear to erupt from an aperture in our universe – a tear in the space-time fabric, a glitch in what is possible. It is as though they come from elsewhere , an unsettling and decidedly weird effect. But why are tentacles so unsettling? In a recent Covid 19 press conference, Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern referred to the ‘tentacle of Covid 19’(Ardern) . Previously described as a ‘long tail’, the lingering cases of Tāmaki Makaurau’s 2021 Delta outbreak have morphed into something more alien. While it was likely intended as a joke, the equation of the tentacle with abject or undesirable lifeforms is ubiquitous. As jellyfish thrive in acidifying oceans,‘the jellification of the sea’ is a common theme in climate discourse . We are warned that soon these slimy ‘monsters’ are all that will survive; without brains, lungs, or stomachs, jellyfish are ‘taking over’(Shafy) . However, in his talk at the 2013 Socialism Conference, New Weird author China Miéville finds other ways to think the tentacular (‘Marxism’) . Famous for his own novel about deep-sea monsters (Kraken , 2010), Miéville draws on the cephalopodic to explore the ways in which dread is a necessary antecedent to sentience . He discusses a 2009 Australian study of the veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus), which found that this species was‘carrying around coconut shell halves, assembling them as shelter only when needed’(Finn et. al R1069). While many marine species use shells for protection from predators, these octopi seemed to be carrying the shells in preparation for possible use, like an umbrella or bottle opener . Miéville argues that this indexes the octopus’ ability to dread and, subsequently, that all sentience comes from orienting towards the potentiality of a th","cbCaisvkDnxeH3sU","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaisvkDnxeH3sU","pdf",215045,22,"English","# “Her Brains Are All Over Her Body”\n## Avian Weird and the Chthulucene\n## Tentacles, dread, and nonhuman survival\n## Anthropocene monsters and global warming","[{\"question\":\"What does the paper mean by “avian Weird” in VanderMeer’s New Weird fiction?\",\"answer\":\"It frames “avian Weird” as a way of representing birds that reveals entangled, monstrous ontologies, aligned with Haraway’s Chthulucene rather than human-centered narratives.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper distinguish New Weird from Lovecraftian “Old Weird”?\",\"answer\":\"It contrasts the New Weird as VanderMeer’s subversive urban secondary-world fiction with the earlier Lovecraftian “Old Weird,” which is associated with cosmic horror confronting limits of human knowledge.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the paper connect tentacles, dread, and sentience?\",\"answer\":\"Using Miéville’s argument about dread as an antecedent to sentience, it shows how tentacular thinking opens apertures in thought and displaces the human toward the nonhuman unknown.\"}]","‘Her Brains Are All Over Her Body’ - Jeff VanderMeer’s Avian Weird | PDF",1791327132,34]