(Abstract)
Many articles dealing with the unheimlich have been written by authors such as Ernst Jentsch(1867∼1919) and Sigmund Freud(1856∼1938). Much, however, still remains to be explicated, especially the mechanism and the role of the unheimlich in the literary narrative and the creative activ...
(Abstract)
Many articles dealing with the unheimlich have been written by authors such as Ernst Jentsch(1867∼1919) and Sigmund Freud(1856∼1938). Much, however, still remains to be explicated, especially the mechanism and the role of the unheimlich in the literary narrative and the creative activities. This indicates the purpose of this thesis in three levels and implies that the unheimlich has things to suggest not only in the comprehension of the literary theory and works, but in practical artistic creations and sublimation as well. This thesis, through the analysis of literary works, delves into the unheimlich, the concept which was first studied in full by Sigmund Freud in terms of psychoanalysis. Freud says unheimlich is “what we have known from a long time ago, a strange and unstable emotion caused from what was familiar.” Jacques Lacan explained unheimlich as ‘extimacy(ex-intimacy),’ then a new concept, indicating the outsider always already in me. In this research unheimlich is defined as the fatal fascination and jouissance of intimate dread that trigger the simultaneous co-existence of ambivalent elements.
This thesis attempts to illustrate the active function of the unheimlich taken as a dynamic mechanism whose developmental stages are as follows: the first stage of settling of the unheimlich signifiant, the second stage of unheimlich apparition of the doubles and ghosts, sometimes pathological, the third stage of repetition compulsion and death drive to the extent that the protagonist eventually faces a fatal accident which compose the fourth stage of self-destruction or getting over that tragedy. This constitutes the first part of the unheimlich mechanism and itself can already construct the narrative base of the story.
The second part concerns the fantasy traversing: the mortal accident could be overcome by chance or thanks to the physical and mental strength of the charactors. He awakes from the fixation of fantasy and hallucinate obsession. Likewise, not only will he be able to avoid the self-destruction, but have epiphany or nescience and applies this illumination in his daily life artfully.
This opens him a higher level of the unheimlich mechanism, namely, the stage of sublimation. Just his daily life transforms into an invisible veritable art, his activities an aesthetic sublimation of concealment/revelation, or even they will sometimes be linked to the effective literary and artistic creations. The doubles, Déjà-vu, Automatons, ghosts, monsters, the Real, ‘Object a’ and unhomely home are frequent themes of those creations. Works such as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and Aloft by Chang-Rae Lee will be analyzed to emphasize the unheimlich mechanism. Unheimlich has not been covered fully as post-humanism is considered to have come with the ‘Uncanny valley’ phenomenon in AI robots, IT and cyborg etc.
Chapter II explores unheimlich in relation to Freud’s thoughts on the return of the repression, dream and drive. According to Freud, the suppressed psychic concepts(‘Vorstellung’: signifiant) in the unconsciousness become unheimlich when they return. The imperfect, fragmented mirror image of a baby of 6 to 18 months is normally suppressed unconscious under the approving affectionate gaze of the mother to yield him then the psychic concept of the Name of the Father. However, when occurs the ‘foreclosure’ of ‘The Name-of-the-Father’ in the process of ego and subject formation, an individual’s mirror image in the childhood comes back as hallucination elements and provokes redoubtable unheimlich.
Freud said about dream that he spotted the kernel of the dream or the singular wish of the dream; in his dream of “Irma’s Injection,” he saw in the nose of Irma the imagery equal to the site of his mother’s penis. This was the attainment of his divine enlightenment of the dream. On the other hand, the hieroglyph in the dream, ‘Trimethylamin’ for instance, calm down the fear of spotting the Real, the phallus of the mother.
After the return of the unconscious repression and dream, the unheimlich is manifest in the drive. The drive is defined as the constant energy between body and mind thereby already showing its ambivalent and unheimlich character. Drive shows a rich version of the unheimlich because it is generated when the physical libido attains the milieu of the mind thereby internalizing the ambiguous traits between the physic/mind, which will then be transmitted to the signifiants.
Chapter III deals with the unheimlich in terms of the theory of Lacan. This relates to the drive theory and the hallucinate apparition of the Real in the identification process of the subject forming. For Lacan’s theory of the three orders, there is the return of the Real which is the strongest factor causing the unheimlich. The unheimlich caused from the encounters with the Real can be categorized into two: the first is the unheimlich generated from the Automatons, letters going towards the symbolic world, and the second is the unheimlich caused by the Tuché, which is the coming across with the variety of the Real, for instance primitive beliefs now surmounted, ghosts, illusions, phantoms, hallucination, etc.
Lacan develops the theory of drive more in detail. Its energy becomes partial and fragmented dispersing and corresponding to all partial impulsion points of the body. There are four major drive sources and they are the oral, anal, scopophilia and invocatory drive. It functions in three stages: the first active stage, the second self-returning stage and the passive-causative stage. A subjective agency in one stage takes a role of an object in another stage or their active and passive function is reversed passing through the stages. The signifiants and ‘Objet a’ oscillating between psychic milieus of the unconsciousness and pre-consciousness follow these versatile stages in their action process, which is why they become ambivalent and unheimlich going through those processes and sometimes emerging on the surface of consciousness.
Expounding the scopophilia drive Freud said that the one to whom an exhibitionist exposes is "another ego that went outside" in an unheimlich manner. However, Lacan insisted that the gaze put in front of him in a person is a sort of the partial object, namely, of the big Other. He finally concluded that the new ‘Object a’ and therein the new subject is born at that moment.
Chapter IV shows how unheimlich is expressed in literary works, studied so far. Ambivalent feeling for the parents, as the ambivalent emotion of affection/hatred in love is so, is a typical source of provoking unheimlich. Frankenstein by M. Shelley shows it very well. It unfolds the unheimlich mechanism; the protagonist, Victor chases the Other, his father and the unheimlich figure. He then encounters the doubles of the father, namely, Coppelius, Spallanzani and Coppola and mesmerized by them amid obsessional delusion. After several meanders of events, he finally faces the mortal accident in the northern arctic ocean. He was to die but fortunately meet another father-double, captain Walton who is his ego ideal, and travers the unheimlich fantasy. Frankenstein seems to be cured thanks to the ‘talking cure’ of Walton and leave his story as a work of sublimation.
The second work analyzed is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. This thesis may be the first to read it under the Lacanian subject theory combined with the scopophilia drive explicated by Lacan. The leading character Lily first identifies herself with Mrs Ramsay in a manner of mirror image identification. But after the death of Mrs Ramsay she finds herself between two deaths, one is of Mrs Ramsay and the other is her actual pseudo death situation in the ruined revisited villa where she sees herself having no real existential reason to have been re-invited. Consequently, she feels constantly confused and deranged by the ghost apparition of Mrs Ramsay.
At the same time Mr Ramsay floats to the psychic surface and approaches to Lily. In fact, he remained unconscious during the whole first part of the novel where Lily tries in vain to identify herself with Mrs Ramsay whose life purpose was totally different from that of Lily. That was her so called ego identification through the imaginary mirror image of Mrs. Ramsey.
Her subject formation occurs when she comprehends her mimic identification hero is now dead without any valuable self-fulfillment. Lily breaks out of it while she was thinking painfully about the arrangement of a tree in her painting. She and Mr. Ramsay approach each other nearer. They come to an accommodation showing their interest to each other and especially through Mr. Ramsay’s boots, the ‘Object a’ relating them each other.
The Ramsay family departs to the lighthouse and Lily at home goes on painting. The lighthouse long time inhibited to visit by Mr Ramsay was a symbol of the Other. As she knew that the lighthouse was reached out and became no more inhibited, she suddenly got an epiphany. She briskly draws a vertical line in the middle of her canvas where the big tree lied in its middle. This powerful stroke has many psychological meanings. The writer highlights its assertive negativity that accompanies the formation of the subject of Lily as she now enters to the world of symbols from the imaginary world. The stroke according to Lacan represents the significance of subject forming which is one in the many, ones as many and many as one. This is called the ‘unary trait’ of Lacan compared to the traditional ‘binaries.’ It also visually indicates the phallus and feminine sexual organ at the same time. It is itself a break/scar/in-between space, which is the Lacanian subject itself. The subject according to Lacan is in fact a fading no-time-moment between two signifiants.
Aloft by Korean American writer Lee Chang Rae, living in the United States, is a story of an Italian American landscaping business man who married a Korean woman. It is analyzed in association with the unheimlich in the identity formation of diaspora family members. Jerry was unconsciously rousting the imago of his long ago dead Asian wife. As a water drop smears silently, Jerry’s Korean wife Daisy predicted a sudden appearance of a stranger in his life and mind. It is the prediction of the speaking subject concealed in his unconsciousness.
Of course, he is rather ignorant of that effect; it only materializes as his need to run away from his house, whose reason is unclear. He then learns to pilot and enjoys amateur flying, alone far away from his house, goes to see his lovers, Rita or Kelly and shows his passionate respect for a vessel traveler, sir Isaac, yet unknown to him.
However, he soon faces the truth and after escaping the fatal plane accident whose wheel he was taking, he traverses fantasy. He digs out the swimming pool and finds the thing of Daisy such as shoes, tube and plastic toys of children.
He goes down the hole of the pool freshly dug out, feels the presence of his wife in it every day and he finally finds peace of his mind. During the family gathering as he was in that hole, he suddenly hears a voice from nowhere above his head: ‘Now where’s Jerry?’ This voice in fact of the invocatory drive, the Real. Jerry’s name is called, and this enables him to connect with the Name of the Father. He is in effect re-born by being called by his proper name for he has been trying to live the life of his dead brother. Unconsciousness acts as a re-emergence as the title of the novel, Aloft, alludes.
In conclusion, the unheimlich is the issue of insensitivity and process. Unheimlich is what exists inside of all as the ego is from the start constructed from the part of the Other. It is the intrinsic familiar stranger that has already come inside me in no time, as Lacan’s ‘extimacy’ infers. It is what arouses a thrill like a shadow of an extimate alien. Likewise, the unheimlich in this paper shows that it can act as an axis that can stipulate the coordination of mental areas in the process of literary analyses, creation and artistic event.
(Abstract)
Many articles dealing with the unheimlich have been written by authors such as Ernst Jentsch(1867∼1919) and Sigmund Freud(1856∼1938). Much, however, still remains to be explicated, especially the mechanism and the role of the unheimlich in the literary narrative and the creative activities. This indicates the purpose of this thesis in three levels and implies that the unheimlich has things to suggest not only in the comprehension of the literary theory and works, but in practical artistic creations and sublimation as well. This thesis, through the analysis of literary works, delves into the unheimlich, the concept which was first studied in full by Sigmund Freud in terms of psychoanalysis. Freud says unheimlich is “what we have known from a long time ago, a strange and unstable emotion caused from what was familiar.” Jacques Lacan explained unheimlich as ‘extimacy(ex-intimacy),’ then a new concept, indicating the outsider always already in me. In this research unheimlich is defined as the fatal fascination and jouissance of intimate dread that trigger the simultaneous co-existence of ambivalent elements.
This thesis attempts to illustrate the active function of the unheimlich taken as a dynamic mechanism whose developmental stages are as follows: the first stage of settling of the unheimlich signifiant, the second stage of unheimlich apparition of the doubles and ghosts, sometimes pathological, the third stage of repetition compulsion and death drive to the extent that the protagonist eventually faces a fatal accident which compose the fourth stage of self-destruction or getting over that tragedy. This constitutes the first part of the unheimlich mechanism and itself can already construct the narrative base of the story.
The second part concerns the fantasy traversing: the mortal accident could be overcome by chance or thanks to the physical and mental strength of the charactors. He awakes from the fixation of fantasy and hallucinate obsession. Likewise, not only will he be able to avoid the self-destruction, but have epiphany or nescience and applies this illumination in his daily life artfully.
This opens him a higher level of the unheimlich mechanism, namely, the stage of sublimation. Just his daily life transforms into an invisible veritable art, his activities an aesthetic sublimation of concealment/revelation, or even they will sometimes be linked to the effective literary and artistic creations. The doubles, Déjà-vu, Automatons, ghosts, monsters, the Real, ‘Object a’ and unhomely home are frequent themes of those creations. Works such as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and Aloft by Chang-Rae Lee will be analyzed to emphasize the unheimlich mechanism. Unheimlich has not been covered fully as post-humanism is considered to have come with the ‘Uncanny valley’ phenomenon in AI robots, IT and cyborg etc.
Chapter II explores unheimlich in relation to Freud’s thoughts on the return of the repression, dream and drive. According to Freud, the suppressed psychic concepts(‘Vorstellung’: signifiant) in the unconsciousness become unheimlich when they return. The imperfect, fragmented mirror image of a baby of 6 to 18 months is normally suppressed unconscious under the approving affectionate gaze of the mother to yield him then the psychic concept of the Name of the Father. However, when occurs the ‘foreclosure’ of ‘The Name-of-the-Father’ in the process of ego and subject formation, an individual’s mirror image in the childhood comes back as hallucination elements and provokes redoubtable unheimlich.
Freud said about dream that he spotted the kernel of the dream or the singular wish of the dream; in his dream of “Irma’s Injection,” he saw in the nose of Irma the imagery equal to the site of his mother’s penis. This was the attainment of his divine enlightenment of the dream. On the other hand, the hieroglyph in the dream, ‘Trimethylamin’ for instance, calm down the fear of spotting the Real, the phallus of the mother.
After the return of the unconscious repression and dream, the unheimlich is manifest in the drive. The drive is defined as the constant energy between body and mind thereby already showing its ambivalent and unheimlich character. Drive shows a rich version of the unheimlich because it is generated when the physical libido attains the milieu of the mind thereby internalizing the ambiguous traits between the physic/mind, which will then be transmitted to the signifiants.
Chapter III deals with the unheimlich in terms of the theory of Lacan. This relates to the drive theory and the hallucinate apparition of the Real in the identification process of the subject forming. For Lacan’s theory of the three orders, there is the return of the Real which is the strongest factor causing the unheimlich. The unheimlich caused from the encounters with the Real can be categorized into two: the first is the unheimlich generated from the Automatons, letters going towards the symbolic world, and the second is the unheimlich caused by the Tuché, which is the coming across with the variety of the Real, for instance primitive beliefs now surmounted, ghosts, illusions, phantoms, hallucination, etc.
Lacan develops the theory of drive more in detail. Its energy becomes partial and fragmented dispersing and corresponding to all partial impulsion points of the body. There are four major drive sources and they are the oral, anal, scopophilia and invocatory drive. It functions in three stages: the first active stage, the second self-returning stage and the passive-causative stage. A subjective agency in one stage takes a role of an object in another stage or their active and passive function is reversed passing through the stages. The signifiants and ‘Objet a’ oscillating between psychic milieus of the unconsciousness and pre-consciousness follow these versatile stages in their action process, which is why they become ambivalent and unheimlich going through those processes and sometimes emerging on the surface of consciousness.
Expounding the scopophilia drive Freud said that the one to whom an exhibitionist exposes is "another ego that went outside" in an unheimlich manner. However, Lacan insisted that the gaze put in front of him in a person is a sort of the partial object, namely, of the big Other. He finally concluded that the new ‘Object a’ and therein the new subject is born at that moment.
Chapter IV shows how unheimlich is expressed in literary works, studied so far. Ambivalent feeling for the parents, as the ambivalent emotion of affection/hatred in love is so, is a typical source of provoking unheimlich. Frankenstein by M. Shelley shows it very well. It unfolds the unheimlich mechanism; the protagonist, Victor chases the Other, his father and the unheimlich figure. He then encounters the doubles of the father, namely, Coppelius, Spallanzani and Coppola and mesmerized by them amid obsessional delusion. After several meanders of events, he finally faces the mortal accident in the northern arctic ocean. He was to die but fortunately meet another father-double, captain Walton who is his ego ideal, and travers the unheimlich fantasy. Frankenstein seems to be cured thanks to the ‘talking cure’ of Walton and leave his story as a work of sublimation.
The second work analyzed is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. This thesis may be the first to read it under the Lacanian subject theory combined with the scopophilia drive explicated by Lacan. The leading character Lily first identifies herself with Mrs Ramsay in a manner of mirror image identification. But after the death of Mrs Ramsay she finds herself between two deaths, one is of Mrs Ramsay and the other is her actual pseudo death situation in the ruined revisited villa where she sees herself having no real existential reason to have been re-invited. Consequently, she feels constantly confused and deranged by the ghost apparition of Mrs Ramsay.
At the same time Mr Ramsay floats to the psychic surface and approaches to Lily. In fact, he remained unconscious during the whole first part of the novel where Lily tries in vain to identify herself with Mrs Ramsay whose life purpose was totally different from that of Lily. That was her so called ego identification through the imaginary mirror image of Mrs. Ramsey.
Her subject formation occurs when she comprehends her mimic identification hero is now dead without any valuable self-fulfillment. Lily breaks out of it while she was thinking painfully about the arrangement of a tree in her painting. She and Mr. Ramsay approach each other nearer. They come to an accommodation showing their interest to each other and especially through Mr. Ramsay’s boots, the ‘Object a’ relating them each other.
The Ramsay family departs to the lighthouse and Lily at home goes on painting. The lighthouse long time inhibited to visit by Mr Ramsay was a symbol of the Other. As she knew that the lighthouse was reached out and became no more inhibited, she suddenly got an epiphany. She briskly draws a vertical line in the middle of her canvas where the big tree lied in its middle. This powerful stroke has many psychological meanings. The writer highlights its assertive negativity that accompanies the formation of the subject of Lily as she now enters to the world of symbols from the imaginary world. The stroke according to Lacan represents the significance of subject forming which is one in the many, ones as many and many as one. This is called the ‘unary trait’ of Lacan compared to the traditional ‘binaries.’ It also visually indicates the phallus and feminine sexual organ at the same time. It is itself a break/scar/in-between space, which is the Lacanian subject itself. The subject according to Lacan is in fact a fading no-time-moment between two signifiants.
Aloft by Korean American writer Lee Chang Rae, living in the United States, is a story of an Italian American landscaping business man who married a Korean woman. It is analyzed in association with the unheimlich in the identity formation of diaspora family members. Jerry was unconsciously rousting the imago of his long ago dead Asian wife. As a water drop smears silently, Jerry’s Korean wife Daisy predicted a sudden appearance of a stranger in his life and mind. It is the prediction of the speaking subject concealed in his unconsciousness.
Of course, he is rather ignorant of that effect; it only materializes as his need to run away from his house, whose reason is unclear. He then learns to pilot and enjoys amateur flying, alone far away from his house, goes to see his lovers, Rita or Kelly and shows his passionate respect for a vessel traveler, sir Isaac, yet unknown to him.
However, he soon faces the truth and after escaping the fatal plane accident whose wheel he was taking, he traverses fantasy. He digs out the swimming pool and finds the thing of Daisy such as shoes, tube and plastic toys of children.
He goes down the hole of the pool freshly dug out, feels the presence of his wife in it every day and he finally finds peace of his mind. During the family gathering as he was in that hole, he suddenly hears a voice from nowhere above his head: ‘Now where’s Jerry?’ This voice in fact of the invocatory drive, the Real. Jerry’s name is called, and this enables him to connect with the Name of the Father. He is in effect re-born by being called by his proper name for he has been trying to live the life of his dead brother. Unconsciousness acts as a re-emergence as the title of the novel, Aloft, alludes.
In conclusion, the unheimlich is the issue of insensitivity and process. Unheimlich is what exists inside of all as the ego is from the start constructed from the part of the Other. It is the intrinsic familiar stranger that has already come inside me in no time, as Lacan’s ‘extimacy’ infers. It is what arouses a thrill like a shadow of an extimate alien. Likewise, the unheimlich in this paper shows that it can act as an axis that can stipulate the coordination of mental areas in the process of literary analyses, creation and artistic event.
Keyword
#운하임리히 프로이트 라캉 문학 서사 언캐니 무의식 억압 욕동 실재 주체 정체성 욕망 메리 셸리 프랑켄슈타인 버지니아 울프 등대로 이창래 떠오름 가족 uncanny unheimlich Freud Lacan Subject Identity Frankenstein Aloft To the Lighthouse
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