
Uncanny Encounters
Literature, Psychoanalysis, and the End of Alterity
John Zilcosky(Author)
Northwestern University Press
Will be published approx. on 29. February 2016
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-0-8101-3210-8 (ISBN)
Description
Around 1900, when the last blank spaces on their maps were filled, Europeans traveled to far-flung places hoping to find traces of the spectacularly foreign. They discovered instead what Freud called, several years later, the ""uncannily"" familiar: disturbing reflections of themselves-either actual Europeans or Westernized natives. This experience was most extreme for German travelers, who arrived in the contact zones late, on the heels of other European colonialists, and it resulted not in understanding or tolerance but in an increased propensity for violence and destruction. The quest for a "virginal," exotic existence proved to be ruined at its source, mirroring back to the travelers demonic parodies of their own worst aspects. In this strikingly original book, John Zilcosky demonstrates how these popular "uncanny" encounters influenced Freud's-and the literary modernists'-use of the term, and how these encounters remain at the heart of our crosscultural anxieties today.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
29 images
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
522 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-3210-8 (9780810132108)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2015
1st Edition
Northwestern University Press
€34.49
Available for download
Person
John Zilcosky is a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Toronto, Canada. His previous publications include Kafka's Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing (2003), winner of the MLA's 2004 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, and Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey (2008).