One hundred years ago Freud’s definition of the uncanny was ‘not the strange, but the familiar become strange’. In this anthology of new work from a range of writers and academics, the uncanny is a place where you feel at home – until home turns against you. It’s a city where the streets can’t join up. The uncanny alienates your own body from you through medical advances, such as prosthetic limbs or cardiac defibrillators. The ‘uncanny valley’ is a landscape where robots try to imitate you.
This anthology gets beneath the skin and into the depths of what it means to be human in an age of machines and genes.
Featuring papers and stories from Pippa Goldschmidt, Gill Haddow, Fadhila Mazanderani, Jane Alexander, Ruth Aylett, Christine De Luca, Vassilis Galanos, Jules Horne, Donna Mc Cormack, Aoife S. Mc Kenna, Jane Mc Kie, nicky melville, Dilys Rose, Naomi Salman, Helen Sedgwick, Sarah Stewart, Alice Tarbuck, Clare Uytman, Sara Wasson, Neil Williamson and Eris Young.
Cuprins
Introduction – Pippa Goldschmidt, Gill Haddow and Fadhila Mazanderani
familiars – nicky melville
Section One – Pain, Illness and Healing
Half Here, Half Where – Dilys Rose
Forgetting – Alice Tarbuck
Pain’s Uncanny – Sara Wasson
The Stane Bairn – An Uncanny Play – Jules Horne
Response to ‘The Stane Bairn: An Uncanny Play’ by Jules Horne – Aoife S. Mc Kenna
Bunting – Neil Williamson
Skin Sisters – Bridget Bradley
The Treatment – Helen Sedgwick
What I Haven’t Told You – Sarah Stewart
Unbecoming Animal – Ritti Soncco
Uncanny Healing – Ed Cohen
Section Two – Situating bodies: the uncanny in the city and the forest
Revenant Visits Her Old Bedroom – Sarah Stewart
The Dark Forest – Sarah Stewart
Seeing the trees for the forest: Learning to listen to all of the
voices in ‘The Dark Forest’ – Emily F. Porth
The Haunted House, or the Other in the Self – Donna Mc Cormack
A Bed of My Own – Christine De Luca
Where the Edinburgh All-night Bakery Used to Be – Jane Mc Kie
Three-stage No Colour Day – Jane Mc Kie
East Coast Gothic – Jane Mc Kie
Baby – Jane Mc Kie
Ma – Pippa Goldschmidt
Uncan – Shona Kerr
Rodd widenin i da Hulmalees – Christine De Luca
In Pursuit – Christine De Luca
Little Cat from the Bronx – Eris Young
Section Three – Transforming bodies into Other
Alexa – Alice Tarbuck
Feeling Machines: Emotion Recognition in Personal Assistants – Benedetta Catanzariti
The Lag – Jane Alexander
Amputation, Prosthesis Use and The Uncanny – Dr Clare Uytman
sur la comète – Naomi Salman
sur la comète; A story of everyday cyborgs in love – Gill Haddow
A woman meets a robot in a dream – Ruth Aylett
Humanoid Robot – Ruth Aylett
Robophobia – Ruth Aylett
The robot researcher’s lament – Ruth Aylett
Towards a Chronological Cartography of the Uncanny Valley
and its Uncanny Coincidences - Vassilis Galanos