Of Parasites and Plagues: The Social Origins of Cosmic Horror

The Otago Socialist Society is thrilled to be presenting this guest lecture for our October 2024 monthly event.

Chris Lam is a recent graduate of the English programme at the University of Otago, having completed their master’s degree this year. Their research focuses on horror, alienation, and the weird in fiction.

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Of Parasites and Plagues: the Social Origins of Cosmic Horror
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Are plagues and parasites natural? For hundreds of years, natural disasters were theorised as sublime—as forces beyond the grasp of the human mind, let alone human control. Yet, the intensification of global warming, and globalisation more generally, have led to extreme phenomena such as cyclones, wildfires, pandemics, and mass extinction. The world is getting weirder. Unlike the weird of Lovecraft’s time, this weird is increasingly theorised as emerging from our own actions.

Contemporary weird fictions are intimately aware of this. Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series engages with polluted ecosystems that mutate the human beyond recognition. China Mieville’s Bas-Lag series features irradiated wastelands and quantum weaponry that rupture space-time itself. Rather than connected to an outside force, these weirds emerge through human systems of exploitation and control.

This talk explores the dystopian worlds of Inside and Pathologic 2, video games that simulate societies in crisis. The nonhuman features prominently as either a biological technology of control or an unintended consequence of capitalism. Parasites and plagues fester, devouring the rotting body of capital along with its marginalised subjects. Yet, even amidst the ruins, glimmers of hope can be seen. Unlikely alliance form across humans and nonhumans, new worldviews emerge, and new futures are striven for. . .

Free to attend, all welcome. Opening at 6PM.