Ineffable and Weird Fiction

Abstract

What is the ineffable? If one were to look up the standard definition, they would find that it is generally defined as something ‘too great, powerful beautiful etc. to be described or expressed.’ The purpose of our retrospective recap is to examine the shift in the place of the ineffable in culture and to point to the arising of the little-known genre, weird fiction, as a possible symptom in the collective because of the displacement of the ineffable. It is to show that by a careful examination of culture and art, particularly as art gives space for the ineffable, one might gain a window into understanding of the current nature of unconscious anxieties of a cultur.