Description

Book Synopsis
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 themselveseither 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'sand the literary modernists'use of the term, and how these encounters remain at the heart of our crosscultural anxieties today.

Uncanny Encounters Literature Psychoanalysis and

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    A Paperback by John Zilcosky

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      Book details

      Publisher Northwestern University Press
      Published 2/15/2016 12:00:00 AM
      ISBN-13 9780810132092
      978-0810132092
      ISBN-10 0810132095
      Also in:
      Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Cultural studies: customs and traditions Sociology

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      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 themselveseither 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'sand the literary modernists'use of the term, and how these encounters remain at the heart of our crosscultural anxieties today.

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