Uncanny
The Uncanny (Ger. Das Unheimliche -- literally, "un-home-ly") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange. [1]
Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.
History
The state is first identified by Ernst Jentsch in a 1906 essay, "On the Psychology of the Uncanny." Jentsch defines the uncanny as: "doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might be, in fact, animate" [1], and expands upon its use in fiction:
In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately. [1]
Jentsch identifies German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann as a writer who utilizes uncanny effects in his work, focusing specifically on Hoffmann's story "The Sandman" ("Der Sandmann"), which features a life-like doll, Olympia.
The concept of the Uncanny was later elaborated on and developed by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay "The Uncanny," which also draws on the work of Hoffmann (whom Freud refers to as the "unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature"). However, he criticizes Jentch's belief that Olympia is the central uncanny element in the story:
I cannot think — and I hope most readers of the story will agree with me — that the theme of the doll Olympia, who is to all appearances a living being, is by any means the only, or indeed the most important, element that must be held responsible for the quite unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness evoked by the story. .[1]
Instead, Freud draws on a wholly different element of the story, namely, "the idea of being robbed of one's eyes," as the "more striking instance of uncanniness" in the tale.
Freud goes on, for the remainder of the essay, to identify uncanny effects that result from instances of "repetition of the same thing," including incidents wherein one becomes lost and accidentally retraces one's steps, and instances wherein random numbers recur, seemingly meaningfully (here Freud may be said to be prefiguring the concept that Jung would later refer to as synchronicity). He also discusses the uncanny nature of Otto Rank's concept of the "double."
Related theories
This concept is closely related to Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection where one reacts adversely to that which has been forcefully cast out of the symbolic order. Abjection can be uncanny in that the observer can recognize something within the abject, possibly of what it was before it was 'cast out', yet be repulsed by what it is that made it cast out to begin with.
Roboticist Masahiro Mori's "uncanny valley" hypothesis (describing human reactions to human-like robots) is deeply indebted to Jentsch and Freud's observations.
Etymology
To be canny, the root of the word, is to be knowing [2], so therefore, uncanny is to be un-knowing. The word 'uncanny' is a misnomer of sorts due to its prefix 'un'. Since the uncanny is a contradictory state and 'un' merely negates the root rather than contradict it, the word itself does not convey its actual meaning.
References
- ^ a b c d http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/uncanny.html Das Unheimliche (essay)
- ^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/canny Dictionary.com, definition of canny