Revisiting the Uncanny
In his essay “The Uncanny” (1919), Freud theorized the psychological implications of those aesthetic effects which disturb us without us quite knowing why. While, according to Freud, the uncanny or das unheimlich evokes a peculiar form of affect within “the field of the frightening” (123), it is a type of fear distinct from that produced by horror and terror. The uncanny, he argues, registers the traumatic return of “what was once known and had long been familiar” (124), but which had been repressed. Explorations of the uncanny have linked the affect to repetition and the death drive (Royle 84), surrealism (97), uncertainty (Jentsch 7), and “a certainty that goes beyond any certainty that science can provide” (Dolar 22).