💥✍ Maria Walsh wrote The Uncanny is something that erupts in the present from the past. The verb "erupts" is too dramatic; the Uncanny rather 𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 in your consciousness. It's not so abrupt in its hypernormal return. Walsh also suggests The Uncanny is dusty unlike its wet & lively cousin, The Abject - I've always liked that comparison. Freud defined The Uncanny as old & familiar; Jentsch as new & unfamiliar. In Freud it's repression of the old; in Jentsch it's alienation from the new. What both agree on is The Uncanny strives & survives in the home. The Uncanny is translated from the German 𝘶𝘯𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘩 "unhomely" - a paradoxical architecture wherein something disturbs the dusty familiarity of the home to make it strange. Jentsch's definition is externally motivated, especially at the turn of the 19th-Century when the industrial revolution was all shiny brand-new. So new that people retreated to their homes where Freud was waiting in his armchair with cigar (that wasn't a cigar) & evince what you were feeling was something internally motivated, that may have been triggered by the giant metal insect you saw emerging above the Parisian horizon, but beneath its foundations you had your past, a past through which you were feeling intellectually uncertain via some repressed gaze. 𝗜.𝗘. The Uncanny is when you wake up in the morning and realise there is no bread, and you have to go to fucking Tesco! The "fucking" in "fucking Tesco!" takes on a shiny brand-new resonance NOW because you know what that means, a Handmaiden's Trip up to fucking Tesco! where other speechless and crestfallen Handmaidens line up, evenly spaced, except for the "space invaders" - narcissists trapped in their own reflection and making a beeline for the bread aisle to bulk buy. The Uncanny is the service trolley that awaits you at the queue with the disinfectant spray. The Uncanny is those who wear masks and those that don't. The Uncanny is swerving in the aisles where two shoulder-to-shoulder staff members separate & clasp each other in some gesture of support to then turn to me wide-eyed & say "There are too many people in here. Too many. Fucking Management don't care!"🖤

MARCH 29, 2020 (ORIGINALLY POSTED ON INSTAGRAM @a_flash_in_the_small_night