Out-of-placeness

The task of fantastic linguistics is to locate the glossophiles in the wider context of knowledge by questioning why and how they failed to construct the authentic objects of the modern linguistics. By virtue of their out-of-placeness they illuminate the limits of scientific discourse by blurring and bypassing the boundary between science and fantasy.

During the last ice-age, massive stones were carried for miles by the scouring glaciers, only to be left, like passengers at the end of the line, when the glaciers retreated. Stranded in their new surroundings with rocks with which they share no common geology, their out-of-place-ness is evoked by their name: “erratics”.

Gender transgression resulted in the policing of bodies so that they were no longer able to move in and out of public space without heightened surveillance and great risk and fear of punishment. The out of place-ness of the transgender or gnc body in a hetero and cis normative society has harsh disciplinary ramifications.

The sheer out-of-placeness of this poor juvenile stranded in death without the sea in sight is even more disconcerting than a pod of whales washed up on a beach or a lone cetacean in the Thames.