Reinfestare il mondo: Il Weird nel paranormale contemporaneo

Abstract

In her study on the relations between the monstrous, patriarchy and female subjectivities, Jude Ellison Sady Doyleintroduces the famous American demonologist couple Ed and Lorraine Warren as protectors of the Christianparanormal. In the perspective promoted by the Warrens, paranormal is seen as an obstacle to the patriarchal orderruling inside families. In the contemporary cultural context, there are many products that use this reflection as a meansof theoretical deconstruction. The use of specific mechanisms orbiting around the matriarchal figure and personaldiscontents generates a contemporary framework for the exploration of haunting as an esoteric practice with importantspeculative repercussions. In this process, the weird plays a key role, presenting itself as a concept that indicates athreshold. Understood as a movement that pushes what is psychologically, affectively and linguistically defined ashabitual from and through the outside, the weird precedes the actual appearance and tangible experimentation of theparanormal. The aim of this essay is to attempt to recover the anti-human and conflictual aspect inherent in theconcept of the weird. It will therefore be possible to outline a different practice of haunting, based no longer on the ideaof an uncomfortable and unforeseen presence to be expelled, but on the conscious need to place ourselves as the hosts ofa spectral parasitism with which it is possible to rewrite our relationship with the inhuman.