The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction Page: 88
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models ab nihilo what is to be the new real, the new Speculative Fiction. As such, exposing the
cognitive narrativity in the little weird is not enough, for nothing exists in a vacuum. To depart
with a full understanding of the impact of the phenomenon, it must be placed (as best, by its
unstable nature, it can) in the growth cycle of the speculative tradition.
Analysis
The little weird is decidedly not a divergence into one, specific speculative tradition. For
example, it is not a wholesale shift into magical realism. Though there are a number of
similarities between the two literary phenomena, magical realism favors the impossible
simultaneity of a positivist reality as well as a magical one.2 Neither is technically privileged
over the other; however, equating the two is a de facto privileging of the magic, for it is often
irreconcilable with positivism. To make it reconcilable is inherently not positivism. The little
weird, as I have attempted to show, demonstrates the weird (or magic) as a product of positivism
(it is the result of materialist cognition, specifically metaphorization, idio-occultation, and
atemporality). Magic and real, then, are co-equal, for they are both the results of self-world
negotiation; however, neither occur out there in the world, as is often the conceit in purist
magical realism. In other words, in the little weird, the magic is not real, nor is the real magic.
The two do not compete; the magic does not deconstruct the real, for they are both narratives
generated by motivated perception, focalization, and affective discharge. In this sense, the non-
genre little weird is a way of seeing literature, but it does not follow in the wake of any manifesto
or teleology-it is a point of discourse between a self and a work of literature informed by the
collision of cognitive- and literary theories. Further, as I have demonstrated, in the little weird, it
is the normal, the mundane, and the real that is ungraspable, not the magic. That magical realism88
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Bradley, Darin Colbert. The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction, dissertation, May 2007; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3703/m1/92/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .