Todd Suomela's Library tagged uncanny → View Popular, Search in Google

Oct

2011

SF Signal: The Joy of Thinking (And Reading) Weirdly

The word "weird" has a literary lineage, from the classic, often pulpy weird tales to contemporary permutations such as the "New Weird," but for me, weird fiction is any writing that breaks the hold of realism and doubly-immerses me in its web of signification. Everyone immerses themselves once into a fiction, by accepting the words and letting their belief in the meanings of the symbols enter into their consciousness. Reading is an act both of imagination and cogitation, of making sense and creating worlds. But weird fiction pulls you into a second, deeper pool, where your beliefs are challenged, ridiculed, overthrown, or insulted.

www.sfsignal.com/...the-joy-of-thinking-weirdly

- Preview

fiction literature sf fantasy weird interpretation uncanny

Apr

2011

Lovecraft and Kafka: Extimate and Intimate Horror « Larval Subjects .

"Between Lovecraft and Kafka we get two very different sci-fi, horror genres of withdrawn objects. "

larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/...a-extimate-and-intimate-horror

- Preview

fiction criticism horror literature psychology uncanny intimacy

Lovecraftian horror is not simply weird, but rather is a form of horror that depicts an encounter with absolute alterity. The Lovecraftian monster is a monster that is such a strange stranger (in Morton’s terminology) that it elides all possibility of being a neighbor. For this reason this form of horror deserves to be called, drawing on Jaques-Alain Miller’s term, extimate horror. Extimate horror spells the ruin of Kantian synthesis. The madness experienced in Lovecraft’s arctic escapades results from an encounter so foreign, so thorough, so extimate that it cannot be synthesized by any categories, meanings, signifiers, codes, etc. Lovecraft’s monsters are thoroughly other, non-related, beyond domestication, and thoroughly unheimlich.
In Kafka we encounter a very different sort of sci-fi/horror and its accompanying withdrawal, born not of extimacy, but rather of intimacy. Where Lovecraft’s monsters are thoroughly other, the horror of Kafka’s monsters lies in their claustrophobic proximity. This proximity is strange because the characters are simultaneously entangled in it while the monster is nonetheless withdrawn. While there is an absolute separation and distance in the relation between Lovecraft’s monsters and the adventurous scientists, the horror of Kafka is that distance and separation is not possible.
1 more annotation(s)...
- The excruciatingly painful horror of Kafka’s monsters is that we are part of them, that we are entangled within them, yet in such a way that we are simultaneously independent and forever unable to determine what, precisely, it is that we are entangled in.

Aug

2009

Speculative Realism and the Unheimlich « Larval Subjects .

larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/...ive-realism-and-the-unheimlich

- Preview

speculative-realism philosophy uncanny psychotherapy psychoanalysis symbols

The first revolves around the Lacanian category of the symbolic and the function of fantasy. If the Lacanian Real– not to be confused with reality –is so disturbing, then this is because it explodes all the boundaries of the symbolic. Very roughly, the symbolic can be thought of as a sort of web thrown over the world that allows the world to appear organized, totalized, and well sorted into a system of categories. Here there is no better reference for understanding the symbolic than Levi-Strauss and, in particular, The Savage Mind and The Raw and the Cooked. Through the simple semiotic categories of the raw (nature) and the cooked (culture), contends Levi-Strauss, the “primitive” mind is able weave a web of signs and narratives that creates an interface between nature and culture. Through this activity, the alien world of nature becomes heimlich or a “home” with familiar coordinates and relations that we can navigate.
For Lacan a fantasy is not a pleasant imaginary scenerio that we languish privately in the shower. No. Fantasy refers to the frame through which we organize our relation to the world and to others. This in two ways. On the one hand, others are opaque to us. We never know what they’re thinking, what they want, or how they see us. Fantasy provides the answer to that question, creating a sort of schema, not unlike a mathematical function where any random variable we encounter can be placed in the argument position to generate a value according to a rule, that allows us to thematize how others see us, what they want, and what they think of us. If Freud’s encounter with his image as other is uncanny, if it explodes the sustaining framework of his unconscious fantasy organizing interpersonal relations, then this is because, in this fleeting moment, he encounters the otherness of the other or the fact that he cannot master his own image. He sees himself as an other might see him, not as his narcissistic fantasy structure portrays him to himself. His image becomes an object in excess of his self; an object that he cannot master.
2 more annotation(s)...
- It is not by mistake that I choose the discourse of the master to illustrate the Lacanian concept of fantasy. The discourse of the master is the discourse of socialization. It is that discourse that takes the bewildering and confusing world (the S2’s depicted in the right hand portion of the graph above) and totalizes them under a master-term or totalizing signifier that organizes that confusion into a consistent reality. What this discourse masks is the divided subject ($) that lacks the mastery he purports to have. In other words, the truth of the discourse of the master is that the master is divided like everyone else, but the discourse actively dissimulates this truth and strives to exclude it. Although the discourse of the master strives to totalize the world into a consistent system, there is always some element that escapes or that fails to fit (a). The fantasy underlying this structure ($ * a) is the unconscious frame organizing the master’s relation to the other wherein it is believed this remainder can be situated in the system.
- Lacan claims that philosophy is the quintessential discourse of the master. If this seminar is called “the other side of psychoanalysis”, then this is because, when the four discourses are placed in the form of a matrice, the discourse of the master is the exact opposite of the discourse of the analyst. Where the discourse of the analyst addresses the other from the standpoint of the remainder or excess (a) and addresses the other as split ($), the discourse of the master strives to suppress the split subject and exclude the remainder. If philosophy is the discourse of the master, then this precisely because it strives to transform the world into the heimlich through either a totalizing system or through a form of thought where humans stand at the center.