Environmental Humanities and the Uncanny: Ecoculture, Literature and Religion (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)

Sigmund Freud’s essay 'The Uncanny' is celebrating a century since publication. It is arguably his greatest and most fruitful contribution to the study of culture and the environment. __Environmental Humanities and the Uncanny__ brings into the open neglected aspects of the uncanny in this famous essay in its centenary year and in the work of those before and after him, such as Friedrich Schelling, Walter Benjamin, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Bram Stoker. This book does so by focussing on religion, especially at a time and for a world in which some sectors of the monotheisms are in aggressive, and sometimes violent, contention against those of other monotheisms, and even against other sectors within their own monotheism. The chapter on Schelling’s uncanny argues that monotheisms come out of polytheism and makes the plea for polytheism central to the whole book. It enables rethinking the relationships between mythology and monotheistic and polytheistic religions in a culturally and politically liberatory and progressive way. Succeeding chapters consider the uncanny cyborg, the uncanny and the fictional, and the uncanny and the Commonwealth, concluding with a chapter on Taoism as a polytheistic religion. Building on the author’s previous work in __Environmental Humanities and Theologies__ in bringing together theories of religion and the environment, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, ecocultural studies and religion. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgements 9 1 The uncanniness of Freud’s uncanny 10 2 Alligators, crocodiles and the monstrous uncanny 24 3 The uncanny urban underside 43 4 The uncanniness of Schelling’s uncanny 62 5 The uncanny and the work of Walter Benjamin 74 6 The uncanny cyborg 92 7 The uncanny and the fictional 105 8 The uncanny Commonwealth of Christianity 131 9 The living polytheism of the Fung Loy Kok Institute of Taoism/Taoist Tai Chi Society 144 Index 153 Sigmund Freud’s essay on the uncanny is celebrating a century. It is arguably his greatest and most fruitful contribution to the study of culture and the environment.