A Different Interpretation: The Abject and the Uncanny

 

walkingdead.wikia.com

walkingdead.wikia.com

As I always defined “uncanny” to myself as mysterious or out of the ordinary, after doing some research I have found a perspective that is more relevant to our class discussions, especially with regards to traditional gothic motifs. In his The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud defines the uncanny as “Something that was long familiar with the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed” (Introduction xlii), and goes on to discuss how the uncanny deals specifically with “our own cultures past that haunts us.” For Freud, the uncanny is something that sits in the back of our mind — always something that we are unsure about; and something that we never feel comfortable confronting; such as something repressed that occurred during one’s childhood. This closely relates to our discussion of the gothic because Freud interprets uncanny in a dark and unsettling way; similar to the common themes of gothic literature (e.g., dealing with infanticide, rape, murder).

With regards to the abject, I found an interesting, although disturbing, article pertaining to the abjection of women during (more historic) warfare. In Bulent Diken’s Becoming Abject: Rape as a Weapon of War, Diken investigates how rape has been used traditionally to disrupt the opposing side’s solidarity and unity. Diken writes, “Through an analysis of the way rape was carried out by the predominantly paramilitary Serbian forces on Bosnian soil, this article theorizes a two-fold practice of abjection: through war rape an abject is introduced within the woman’s body (sperm or forced pregnancy), transforming her into an abject-self rejected by the family, excluded by the community and quite often also the object of a self-hate, sometimes to the point of suicide.” This is a type of forced-abjection — being stigmatized via rape into the “other.” Whereas we see Medea “othered” through her sexuality, here we see a perspective that one can be forcibly othered by an opposing group. Abject seems to be closely related to the corrupted, ruined, tainted, and exiled. This parallels Medea’s condition, as well as the Gothicism of being ‘different’ from others; such as Concepcion, Ultima, and Medea

Cited:

Diken. “Becoming Abject: Rape as a Weapon of War.” Becoming Abject: Rape as a Weapon of War. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
Freud, Sigmund, David McLintock, and Hugh Haughton. The Uncanny. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.

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