The Uncanny: (strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way)

The uncanny is the psychological experience of something as strangely familiar, rather than simply mysterious. It may describe incidents where an everyday object or event is encountered in an unsettling, eerie, or taboo context. The uncanny places us “in the field where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure”, resulting in an irreducible anxiety that gestures to the Real.

The Uncanny can be related to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley where victor strives to create a new being by stitching various parts of human corpses to create a new being. He wanted to feel the power of creation and cheat death. On chapter 4 (page 49) Victor is filled with regret of the Hideous corpse like creation, “fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life… A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.” We can see how Victor is much more horrified when the muscles and joints started to move. This example of Victor explains the definition of the Uncanny. Something that is strangely familiar. In this example, that was a human-like figure (corpse) that is given life and we are unable to connect to it. It is something that is unnatural.

links to related terms:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/t/uncanny

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/mike-kelley-uncanny