JF MARTEL
  • Home
  • Writings
  • Podcast
  • Media
  • Journal
  • About
  • Contact
Picture

A filmmaker and a professor talk art and philosophy at the limits of the thinkable.

"Weird Studies" is a scholarly field that doesn't and can't exist.

The Weird is that which resists any settled explanation or frame of reference. It is the bulging file labelled “other/misc.” in our mental filing cabinet, full of supernatural entities, magical synchronicities, and occult rites. But it also appears when a work of art breaks in on our habits of perception and ordinary things become uncanny. 

​The Weird is easiest to define as whatever lies on the further side of a line between what we can easily accept from our world and what we cannot. And it defines an attitude towards whatever lies on that side of the line: a willingness to remain suspended between explanations and abide in strangeness.
SUPPORT WEIRD STUDIES

RECENT EPISODES

EPISODE 93 | LIVING AND DYING IN A SECULAR AGE: ON CHARLES TAYLOR AND DISENCHANTMENT
Phil and JF discuss Charles Taylor's monumental work of philosophy, "A Secular Age."

EPISODE 92 | GLITCH IN THE MATRIX: A CONVERSATION WITH RODNEY ASCHER
JF and Phil are joined by American filmmaker Rodney Ascher to discuss film, music, mood, and his new documentary about people who believe we are in living in a computer simulation.

EPISODE 91 | ON SUSANNA CLARKE'S PIRANESI
JF and Phil explore the mysterious world of Susanna Clarke's incredible new novel.

EPISODE 90 | THE OWL IN DAYLIGHT: ON PHILIP K. DICK'S UNWRITTEN MASTERPIECE
Phil and JF discuss the novel that would have been Philip K. Dick's magnum opus ... if he had written it.

EPISODE 89 | ON ISHMAEL REED'S MUMBO JUMBO, OR, WHY WE NEED MORE MAGICAL THINKING
JF and Phil discuss Ishmael Reed's masterpiece of conspiracy fiction.

EPISODE 88 | ON NEIL GAIMAN AND DAVE McKEAN'S MISTER PUNCH
A discussion of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's 1994 graphic novel, The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch.

EPISODE 87 | GLYPHS, RIFTS, AND ECSTASY: ON ARTHUR MACHEN'S VISION OF ART
JF and Phil talk art and ecstasy in this episode on Arthur Machen's aesthetic treatise, Hieroglyphics.

© 2019 J.F. Martel. All rights reserved.