Uncanny Perspectives in Literature and Culture: Texts, Images, Experiences

This collection of essays aims to analyse the uncanny as a concept developed in the field of the arts, from a variety of perspectives axed in the literary field, in the media context, and in film studies, with references to contemporary thought. The book aims to provide readers with a methodological updating on this psychoanalytic concept, starting from its basic rethinking, under the light of the different cultural backgrounds of the authors whose essays are collected. The book’s specific focus is in the research on the many faces the uncanny took in different experiences, forms of writing, ideas of art, theories, discourses, and experiences in creation. This shows, still today, not only the concept’s richness in defining our contemporary cultural context, but also its plasticity and its identity of notion-hinge between eras, ideas of representation, and forms of writing of various types. Contents Editors and Contributors About the Editors List of Contributors List of Figures 1 Introduction References Part I Post-Humanism 2 Murderbot and the Uncanny Physical Make-Up Preservation Society Humans’ Reactions to Murderbot Emotions References 3 “Machines Like Us”: An Overview of AI and Human Nature Introduction Social Imaginary and Literature The AI and the Uncanny The “Double” Conclusion References Part II Uncanny Bodies and the Human 4 Looking at Ophelia’s Death Iconography to Understand the Uncanny in the Beautiful Dead Girl Trope Introduction The Dead Girl Trope and Its Relation to the Uncanny Understanding Ophelia’s Death Iconography The “da Vinci Moment” of Ophelia’s Death Iconography and the Uncanny Conclusion References 5 Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary: An Aesthetic Leap Toward a Queer and Uncanny Ecology What It Means to Be Human The Emissary’s Neon-Ecology An Alternative (Queer) Order References 6 Documenting Pain Through Love, “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath” by W. Eugene Smith The Smiths and the Uemuras The Smiths and the Dancing Cat Illness Photographing the Uemuras The Expansion of Smith’s Way of Seeing Of Human Destruction Exotopic Listening in “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath” Conclusion References 7 Dostoevsky’s “Uncanny” Disease Introduction A Russo-German Genealogy of the “Uncanny” Dostoevsky The Double (1846) Crime and Punishment (1866) Bobok (1873) Enlightenment and the Exposure of the “Uncanny” Conclusion References Part III Visual Culture 8 Blindspot and Avengers Infinity War Translating Uncanny Geographies in Television and Film: Repetition, Doubling, and The Twin Towers Introduction Terrorism and Psychoanalytic Geography Psychoanalytic Geography The Uncanny Maps and Territories Uncanny Perspectives on 9/11and the Twin Towers: Repetition and Doubling Presence and Absence: An Uncanny Pair Psychoanalytic Geography/Uncanny Geography Twins Jane / Remy: Reading the Terrorist Map The Savvy, The Smart, and Activity: Filling in the Gap or Void of the Real—the Fissure in the Symbolic Order The Old Territory, Mapping a New Geography—The Passing of the World Order Conclusion References 9 Uncanny Synaesthesia(s): The Interplay Between Forms, Sounds, and Colours in Samuel Beckett’s Play and Wassily Kandinsky’s In Grey Beckett and Kandinsky In Play; In Grey Uncanny/Uncanning Art Synaesthesia Synaesthetically, Kandinsky! Synaesthesia is Play Nothing is Uncanny Conclusion References 10 Thin Places, Other Worlds, and Visual Layering in Cinema Introduction History of Ghostly Superimposition and Visual Layering Cinema as Haunted Medium Thin Places and the Rapprochement of Distant Realities Conclusion References 11 Fluidity in Stillness: Jean Epstein’s Uncanny Photogénie and the Found Footage Film References 12 Uncanny Objects: Lacan, Heidegger, and the Return of the Gaze Introduction Freud’s Uncanny The Intimate Is Ex-timate The Objet’s G(a)ze The Castrating Gaze When Being Thinks Us References Part IV Spatiality 13 The Contemporary Uncanny After Brexit: Literary Disruptions of the Self Introduction The Uncanny as a Contemporary Concept The Return of the Past Uncanny Reality Conclusion References 14 The Uncanny, Unsurmountable Beliefs and Post-revolutionary Mexico in Juan Bustillo Oro’s Dos monjes (1934) Juan Bustillo Oro and Mexico’s Midcentury Cinema Dos monjes: Uncanny Doubles, Unsurmountable Beliefs and Twisted Moral Codes Uncanny Conclusions References Part V The ‘Uncanny’ Trope 15 A Portrait of the Uncanny in Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore Defining the Uncanny Understanding Murakami’s Underground Worlds The Portrait of the Narrator References 16 Haruki Murakami’s Use of the Uncanny in After Dark (2004): The Corruption of the Home Space and the Subjugation of the Female Characters Introduction Uncanny Homes The Consumable Turned Abject—Guo Dongli Mirrors—Disrupted Reflections? Conclusion References Part VI The Self and the Other: Uncanny Limits 17 Love, Death and Femme Fatales in Keats’ Works A Mythological Family Tree Death, Horror and Uncanny in the Eighteenth Century’s Gothic Novel Monstruous and Unsettling Women in Keats’ Works References 18 The Mimic and the Uncanny: Reading Waste in English, August Introduction Excremental Visions of the Other The Question of the Other On F(e)ace Value Conclusion References Index