Uncanny Encounters - Literature, Psychoanalysis, and the End of Alterity

Around 1900, when the last blank spaces on their maps were filled, Europeans travelled to far-flung places hoping to find traces of the spectacularly foreign. They discovered instead what Freud called the "uncannily” familiar. John Zilcosky demonstrates how these popular "uncanny” encounters influenced Freud's - and the literary modernists' - use of the term, and how these encounters remain at the heart of our crosscultural anxieties today.

About the author

JOHN ZILCOSKY is a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Toronto. His previous publications include Kafka's Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing (2003), winner of the MLA's 2004 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, and Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey (2008).

Summary

Around 1900, when the last blank spaces on their maps were filled, Europeans traveled to far-flung places hoping to find traces of the spectacularly foreign. They discovered instead what Freud called, several years later, the uncannily familiar: disturbing reflections of themselves--either actual Europeans or Westernized natives.

Product details

• Authors: John Zilcosky
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.10.2015
• EAN: 9780810132092
• ISBN: 978-0-8101-3209-2
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries