ABSTRACT
In American literature, ‘the weird’ emerged from a colonial history of genocide and resource extraction, as early examples of weird fiction reflected white racial anxiety about the perceived threat of miscegenation and the repressed guilt of life in a defiled landscape. Preoccupied with notions of contamination and threats from the ‘outside’, weird fiction relayed the horror of white American hegemony as its place of privilege was challenged by modernity. However, in the 21st century ‘weird’ underwent a transformation in colloquial discourse, as it was applied to specific cities viewed as liberal enclaves nestled among politically conservative areas. With the shared slogan of ‘Keep [City] Weird’, places like Portland, Oregon, Austin, Texas, and Santa Cruz, California, transform ‘the weird’ into the very thing under threat from the ‘outside’, committing a kind of historical erasure that severs white, liberal residents from the legacy of violence that defines their fellow colonizers. By making a corporate-friendly claim to regional authenticity, these ‘kept weird’ cities sanitize the potentially radical elements of the weird, making it safe for bourgeois liberal consumption.
