30.8.20 The uncanny, the abject and the sublime
‘There is a certain sense of deep interconnection amongst the concepts of the abject, the uncanny, and the sublime. All seem to be hinged upon the idea of the boundary and a blurring, destruction, or destabilization of the categories it creates. Boundaries serve to separate entities, rendering them unique and distinguishable. Confusion and fear result when boundaries are made obsolete and entities begin to blur together. It is in this state where the crossroads of the abject, uncanny, and sublime can be found. There is an unsettling discomfort and a sensing of something greater than oneself, which Julia Kristeva, Sigmund Freud, and Immanuel Kant all explore in different but extremely interrelated ways. The abject, uncanny, and sublime are not descriptive of the same phenomena, but they are, however, highly related, and many of the ways in which they relate are connected to the creation and destruction of boundaries and an existence within the realm of paradox.’ (Baird, 2013, p2)
‘Kristeva… claims that the abject exists on the edges, defining the self by creating a boundary between the ego and the non-ego. Our horror and repulsion of the abject is a source of protection to maintain this boundary’ (in Baird, 2013, p2)
‘The release of bodily fluids—vomit, tears, excrement--is a protection and preservation of the self but it is also an ejection of the self, which Kristeva equates to giving birth. On one hand, it is a separating and a rejecting of those things which are the other, the toxic, the non-ego. But on the other hand, we can only excrete the self, since we must have ingested and incorporated the thing being excreted as the self before excreting it.
To abject literally means to cast out, which connects to the word made infamous by Freud: castration, meaning to remove, deprive of, or abject a part of the body. Castration is a violation of the body and thus the ego, the self. Kristeva writes, "Significance is indeed inherent in the human body" (10). This sentiment helps to explain the sense of connection we feel between our physical and mental worlds. The body is made significant by the being that inhabits it, and the two become one and the same in the ego. This significance and knowledge of the self is an important concept for Kristeva, as it creates an extremely important boundary—one that separates the ego from the non-ego, the inside from the outside. But, paradoxically, it also dissolves a boundary between the mental and physical self’
Castration and the violating of the boundary of the physical body is tied heavily, for Freud, to the concept of uncanniness. In his essay The Uncanny, he writes: "Dismembered limbs, a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist, [...] all these have something peculiarly uncanny about them, especially when [...] they prove capable of independent activity in addition. As we already know, this kind of uncanniness springs from its proximity to the castration complex" (Freud 946). Perhaps castration can also be called the "abjection of what is still the self." The resulting uncanniness or uneasiness is founded, once again, in the blurring of boundaries. There are good and necessary processes of abjection—ingestion and secretion— which sustain life and form the self and non-self. But castration is an unnecessary abjection of the self, directly and prematurely turning the self into the non-self. This boundary is especially complicated if, as Freud writes, the castrated body part "proves capable of independent activity." This further animates the castrated part, making it even more difficult to determine what is living and what is non-living, what is a part of the self and what is not. (ibid, p3)
Are my cast feet like castrated body parts? Mary Douglas' 'matter out of place'?
‘Freud's concept of the uncanny is also heavily connected to the idea of familiarity. Familiarity as a source of fear and discomfort can be seen in his castration example because what is more familiar to us than our own body? If parts of our or anyone's body are severed—parts of a body which we formerly recognized as a whole—we experience a deep sense of uncanniness’ (ibid, p5).
In Powers of Horror, Kristeva writes of the uncanny in relation to the abject. She claims that the uncanny is recognizable, but it is not the ego. It is familiar, but it is not recognized as a part of the self. It is, therefore, the non-ego, the other. She distinguishes abjection from the concept of the uncanny in writing: "Essentially different from 'uncanniness,' more violent, too, abjection is elaborated through a failure to recognize its kin; nothing is familiar, not even the shadow of a memory" (Kristeva 5). Here she is claiming that uncanniness is founded upon a sense of familiarity and abjection upon a sense of the loss of familiarity, both resulting in the arousal of horror. However, there is more at play here than a simple opposition between the uncanny and the abject. There is an echoed blurring of lines that creates feelings of uneasiness. The uncanny is something which feels familiar but for an unexplained reason. It is familiar but should not feel familiar. The abject is something which feels foreign, also for an unexplained reason. It should feel stable and familiar, yet it feels foreign. Again, we have blurred boundaries, resulting in paradox. (It is also interesting to note Kristeva's assertion that the abject is more violent than the uncanny, especially shortly after investigating Freud's reference tosevered limbs. Perhaps her use of the word "violent" is more figurative than literal and is in reference to the ripping apart of the self and non-self which characterizes abjection.) The sense of (un)familiarity inherent in the definitions of the abject and the uncanny is connected—both for Freud and Kristeva—to the self, since it is the self with which we are most familiar. The most important boundary of all is the one separating ourselves from the outside world—the self from the non-self—because it is this boundary which establishes at the deepest level what should and should not be familiar. We experience uncanniness or horror when what is outside of this boundary is familiar and what is inside this boundary is foreign, thus rendering the boundary obsolete. In fact, according to Kristeva, our lives are founded and maintained on a process of abjection in an attempt to keep this boundary intact. This process, as mentioned earlier, encompasses the ingestion and secretion of material substances, but it also includes the rejection of thoughts or ideas that seem to threaten the ego and thus the boundary of self. Our lives are formed in a constant state of abjection and self-maintenance.
According to Kristeva, the uncanny is the ‘other’.
Baird, A (2013) The Abject, the Uncanny, and the Sublime: A Destabilization of Boundaries Available at: http://writing.rochester.edu/celebrating/2013/Baird.pdf (Accessed: 30 August 2020)
‘There is a certain sense of deep interconnection amongst the concepts of the abject, the uncanny, and the sublime. All seem to be hinged upon the idea of the boundary and a blurring, destruction, or destabilization of the categories it creates. Boundaries serve to separate entities, rendering them unique and distinguishable. Confusion and fear result when boundaries are made obsolete and entities begin to blur together. It is in this state where the crossroads of the abject, uncanny, and sublime can be found. There is an unsettling discomfort and a sensing of something greater than oneself, which Julia Kristeva, Sigmund Freud, and Immanuel Kant all explore in different but extremely interrelated ways. The abject, uncanny, and sublime are not descriptive of the same phenomena, but they are, however, highly related, and many of the ways in which they relate are connected to the creation and destruction of boundaries and an existence within the realm of paradox.’ (Baird, 2013, p2)
‘Kristeva… claims that the abject exists on the edges, defining the self by creating a boundary between the ego and the non-ego. Our horror and repulsion of the abject is a source of protection to maintain this boundary’ (in Baird, 2013, p2)
‘The release of bodily fluids—vomit, tears, excrement--is a protection and preservation of the self but it is also an ejection of the self, which Kristeva equates to giving birth. On one hand, it is a separating and a rejecting of those things which are the other, the toxic, the non-ego. But on the other hand, we can only excrete the self, since we must have ingested and incorporated the thing being excreted as the self before excreting it.
To abject literally means to cast out, which connects to the word made infamous by Freud: castration, meaning to remove, deprive of, or abject a part of the body. Castration is a violation of the body and thus the ego, the self. Kristeva writes, "Significance is indeed inherent in the human body" (10). This sentiment helps to explain the sense of connection we feel between our physical and mental worlds. The body is made significant by the being that inhabits it, and the two become one and the same in the ego. This significance and knowledge of the self is an important concept for Kristeva, as it creates an extremely important boundary—one that separates the ego from the non-ego, the inside from the outside. But, paradoxically, it also dissolves a boundary between the mental and physical self’
Castration and the violating of the boundary of the physical body is tied heavily, for Freud, to the concept of uncanniness. In his essay The Uncanny, he writes: "Dismembered limbs, a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist, [...] all these have something peculiarly uncanny about them, especially when [...] they prove capable of independent activity in addition. As we already know, this kind of uncanniness springs from its proximity to the castration complex" (Freud 946). Perhaps castration can also be called the "abjection of what is still the self." The resulting uncanniness or uneasiness is founded, once again, in the blurring of boundaries. There are good and necessary processes of abjection—ingestion and secretion— which sustain life and form the self and non-self. But castration is an unnecessary abjection of the self, directly and prematurely turning the self into the non-self. This boundary is especially complicated if, as Freud writes, the castrated body part "proves capable of independent activity." This further animates the castrated part, making it even more difficult to determine what is living and what is non-living, what is a part of the self and what is not. (ibid, p3)
Are my cast feet like castrated body parts? Mary Douglas' 'matter out of place'?
‘Freud's concept of the uncanny is also heavily connected to the idea of familiarity. Familiarity as a source of fear and discomfort can be seen in his castration example because what is more familiar to us than our own body? If parts of our or anyone's body are severed—parts of a body which we formerly recognized as a whole—we experience a deep sense of uncanniness’ (ibid, p5).
In Powers of Horror, Kristeva writes of the uncanny in relation to the abject. She claims that the uncanny is recognizable, but it is not the ego. It is familiar, but it is not recognized as a part of the self. It is, therefore, the non-ego, the other. She distinguishes abjection from the concept of the uncanny in writing: "Essentially different from 'uncanniness,' more violent, too, abjection is elaborated through a failure to recognize its kin; nothing is familiar, not even the shadow of a memory" (Kristeva 5). Here she is claiming that uncanniness is founded upon a sense of familiarity and abjection upon a sense of the loss of familiarity, both resulting in the arousal of horror. However, there is more at play here than a simple opposition between the uncanny and the abject. There is an echoed blurring of lines that creates feelings of uneasiness. The uncanny is something which feels familiar but for an unexplained reason. It is familiar but should not feel familiar. The abject is something which feels foreign, also for an unexplained reason. It should feel stable and familiar, yet it feels foreign. Again, we have blurred boundaries, resulting in paradox. (It is also interesting to note Kristeva's assertion that the abject is more violent than the uncanny, especially shortly after investigating Freud's reference tosevered limbs. Perhaps her use of the word "violent" is more figurative than literal and is in reference to the ripping apart of the self and non-self which characterizes abjection.) The sense of (un)familiarity inherent in the definitions of the abject and the uncanny is connected—both for Freud and Kristeva—to the self, since it is the self with which we are most familiar. The most important boundary of all is the one separating ourselves from the outside world—the self from the non-self—because it is this boundary which establishes at the deepest level what should and should not be familiar. We experience uncanniness or horror when what is outside of this boundary is familiar and what is inside this boundary is foreign, thus rendering the boundary obsolete. In fact, according to Kristeva, our lives are founded and maintained on a process of abjection in an attempt to keep this boundary intact. This process, as mentioned earlier, encompasses the ingestion and secretion of material substances, but it also includes the rejection of thoughts or ideas that seem to threaten the ego and thus the boundary of self. Our lives are formed in a constant state of abjection and self-maintenance.
According to Kristeva, the uncanny is the ‘other’.
Baird, A (2013) The Abject, the Uncanny, and the Sublime: A Destabilization of Boundaries Available at: http://writing.rochester.edu/celebrating/2013/Baird.pdf (Accessed: 30 August 2020)