Weird Infrastructure: The Weird in the World-Literary System

In this thesis I will compare “Weird” literary depictions of oil pipelines, railways,
sanitation/sewage systems, and digital communications infrastructures from core and
(semi-)peripheral sites within the world-system. Using the world-systemic framework
outlined by the Warwick Research Collective (WReC), my comparisons will unpack
Weird formal homologies in infrastructurally-bound literature from Korea, Russia, Iran,
Nigeria, the US, and Europe, arguing for the world-literary scope of the Weird. Crucially,
these comparisons are conducted in relation to signals of accumulation crisis
produced by the ecological regime of neoliberal capital. In this mode I argue for the
pervasive and underexplored presence the Weird in world-literature and culture. By
examining how crisis is written into the Weird infrastructure of our world-literary system
it becomes possible to see how the Weird anagnorisis of systemic crisis reverberates
with the possibility of new futures. Throughout this analysis I maintain the efficacy of a
materialist, world-literary approach in this exploration of Weird Infrastructural affect,
effect and form.