WiSe 19/20: S-Culture-Gender-Media: The Uncanny
Peter Löffelbein
Comments
The uncanny is generally perceived to be a staple of modern literature. Often described as a feeling of anxiety and alienation arising from something familiar appearing inexplicably strange, it was first reflected on in psychoanalytic discourse. Since then, the term has been developed as a critical and theoretical concept within various disciplines of the humanities.
This course explores these various notions of the uncanny. We will look at different usages of the term in the history of psychology, philosophy, and literary discourse by theorists ranging from Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud to Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida and others. Juxtaposing their ideas with select literary texts, we will explore to what extent they draw on and correspond with the employment and elicitation of the uncanny in literature.
In what way have notions of the uncanny changed over time? Does the often-proclaimed idea of the uncanny as a marker of (post-)modernity hold up in light of literary analyses? How is the uncanny distinguished from what one might conceive of its inflections and doppelgangers like the eerie, the weird, the mysterious, the numinous, the sublime, and the abnormal, and why? And can notions of the uncanny be employed productively in regard to more recent developments in the humanities like queer theory, posthumanism and postcolonial discourse?
close16 Class schedule
Regular appointments