The 'Confrontational Escapism' of the New Weird: Reading Challenging Fiction in Online Spaces

在国际大动荡的时代，怪诞小说总是会出现某种形式的复兴。蒂姆Lanzendör对新怪异的马克思主义分析阐述说，正是在“经济危机的具体时刻”，新怪异在2000年代再次抬头。当然，新怪异只是在回顾它的种族主义祖先《怪异》时才算是新的，通过托马斯·利戈蒂所谓的对抗性逃避主义的过程，我认为新怪异在很大程度上依赖于这些种族主义、性别歧视和阶级主义的小说，就像真菌依赖于分解和腐烂的东西一样。《新怪异》不断颠覆和挑战20世纪20年代困扰怪异作家的旧恐怖，并认为恐怖不是来自未知和他者，边缘化和脆弱，更多的恐惧和恐怖来自权力结构，来自白人霸权和正常化的异性恋性观念和性别。但是，对于那些被种族、阶级或性别歧视困住的人来说，这个想象中的地狱有什么用呢？《新怪异》在对可怕现实的呼唤中提供了什么？运用马克思主义、女权主义和批判种族理论，我将建立一个框架，通过这个框架来理解“对抗性逃避主义”，以及《新怪人》如何利用它来挑战压迫性的现实；我还将研究读者对新怪异文学想象中的地狱的反应，以及为什么，正如我们所观察到的，与新怪异文学互动的增加发生在Discord和Goodreads等在线空间。因此，论文将重点放在这些文本的批判性阅读和读者对这些具有挑战性的小说的反应上。通过调查为什么读者会沉迷于描绘真实生活现实的令人不安的恐怖，我将结合新怪异小说的批判性参与，提出一种“对抗性逃避主义”理论，通过这种方式，我们可能会更好地理解，如果有的话，通过在线读书俱乐部的公共空间参与创伤现实对心理健康有什么好处。

Weird fiction has always entered into some kind of resurgence in a time of great, international tumult. Tim Lanzendör's Marxist analysis of the Neww Weird elaborates that it was at the 'concerete moment of economic crisis' that the New Weird reared its monstrous head again during the 2000s. Of course, the New Weird is only New in retrospect to its racist ancestor, The Weird, and through the process of what Thomas Ligotti calls Confrontational Escapism, I am arguing that the New Weird very much relies upon these racist, sexist, classist fictions in the same way that fungi might rely on that which decomposes and rots. The New Weird consistently subverts and challenges the old horrors that beset writers of the Weird in the 1920s, and argues that instead of horror being drawn from the unknown and the Other, the marginalised and the vulnerable, there is more dread and terror that comes from power structures, from white hegemonies and normalised, heteronormative conceptions of sex and gender. But what use is this imaginary hell to people trapped and made monstrous by racial, class, or gender discrimination, what does New Weird provide in its invocations of horrific realities? Employing Marxist, feminist, and critical race theories, I will develop a framework through which to understand 'confrontational escapism' and how New Weird's use of it challenges oppressive realities; I will also examine how readers are responding to the imaginary hells of New Weird literature, and why, as will be observed, this increase in engagement with the New Weird has taken place in online spaces such as Discord and Goodreads.The thesis will therefore focus both on critical readings of these texts and on reader's responses to these challenging fictions. By investigating why readers engage with troubling horrors that depict very real, lived-in realities, I will pair with the critical engagement of New Weird fiction to propose a theory of 'Confrontational Escapism', a way in which we might better understood what, if any, mental health benefits there are to engaging with traumatic realities through the communal space of the online book club.