#wednesdaysession

[xromapajo]

Maaga palang tumba na! #Alfonso #WednesdaySession #AlakPa

[xromapajo]

Let's drink to that. #Alfonso #WednesdaySession #AlakPa

[mirandabene]

The Uncanny

In our Wednesday session with Mark Ingham we are now touching on the subject of the uncanny, a subject that is unknown to many. Until this class about the uncanny I have never heard the word but I have definitely "felt" the uncanny. We watched clips from The Ring and The Shining where we shown how the uncanny can be sound, images, text or just superstition put together to make you feel...uneasy? 

Sigmund Freud has written a long thesis (http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf) on the subject in 1919, and this is the text that we were given to read until the next Wednesday session. I read it this morning and it completely grasped me. This is just a summary of the notes we were given and just some of my own reflections on the text. 

The uncanny is something that is terrible, that arouses dread and creeping horror. t makes you feel fearful. At this stage in history (1919) nobody had written about this subject before. Articles and text was always romantic and put in a positive way. 

Sigmund Freud is trying to describe what is the uncanny and what isn't because there is a fine line which is hard to define. Uncanny is something that leads us back to something that was once known to us, something that is familiar. 

The essence of uncanny derives from the german word Heimlich, which can be translated into for example homelike. Freud compares this word to different languages but there isn't one of them that can literally translate this word to fully represent what it stands for in german. 

it is a word with an ambiguous meaning. So heimlich means homelike, something that is known to you. Unheimlich means something that is suspicious, new and something unfamiliar. Bt not only does heimlich means homelike with a positive meaning, it can also mean something that is secretive, untrustworthy, concealed. 

This does not make any sense to me and at this point. How can you tell the difference in a sentence when the word is so ambiguous? In swedish we have a similar word, Hemlig, which can only translate into the negative definition of Heimlich. I think this is rather interesting as Hem translate into House or Home in swedish output together with lig it loses its definition of home. 

Freud writes about another author writing about the uncanny called Otto Rank. Rank writes about the "double" belief in soul and the fear of death. "From having been an assurance of immortality, he becomes the ghastly harbinger of death" he writes. In german this is called Der Doppelgänger. 

Other philosophers at the time are talking about that there is two souls dueling within the human breast. The double has become a vision of terror. 

For example, seeing your own reflection somewhere without realizing it's your own reflection and then instantly feel negative about the image makes you feel uncanny at the point when you realize it's your own reflection you are seeing. 

Omnipotence of thought is another subject Freud describes in his text. Sometimes there are moments when you come across the same number several times on the same day. It can be that the number on your ticket for the postoffice has the same number as building where you are heading for later. When you come across the same number it makes you feel uncanny because it is so unlikely that this happens when you start thinking about the percentage of possibility. This is called repetition compulsion. Also a classic superstition that is uncanny is the evil eye. The feeling of need to protect yourself from the envy of others is a self projected fear which leads to feeling uncanny. 

Death is an unavoidable event (?) for everyone. Civil governments still believe that they cannot maintain moral order among the living if they do not uphold this prospect of a better life after death as a recompense for earthly existence. 

So to make it clearer, the subjects that Freud describes to us as uncanny is animism, when something that is dead comes to life or the other way around. A doll should not talk and act like a human for example. Magic and witchcraft, the omnipotence of thoughts, man's attitude to death, involuntary repetition and the castration complex comprise practically all the factors which turn something fearful into an uncanny thing. 

One of the most simple way of describing the uncanny is when something imaginary appears to us in reality. Uncanny effect is often and easily produced by effacing the distinction between imagination and reality, such as when something that hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality or when a symbol takes over the full functions and significance of the thing it symbolizes and so on. 

It's hard to define when something is uncanny but for example Freud clearly states that fairytales are rarely uncanny because we are told in the start of the story that we are in a fantasy world and whatever happens there is not real. So for example when the hunter gives Snowwhite a kiss and she is brought back to life this is not uncanny because we already know that this is not real. 

In the end Freud sums it up with leaving us to our own thoughts. He doesn't state that this is it, this is uncanny, so we are left make our own conclusions.