Uncanny Encounters: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and the End of Alterity

281 Pages·2016·8.627 MB·English

by  John Zilcosky

Uncanny
Encounters

Uncanny
Encounters
Literature, Psychoanalysis,
and the End of Alterity
John Zilcosky
northwestern university press
evanston, illinois
Northwestern University Press
www .nupress.northwestern.edu
Copyright © 2016 by John Zilcosky.
Published 2016 by Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.
Portions of some chapters have appeared earlier in different form: “Unheimliche
Begegnungen: Abenteuerliteratur, Psychoanalyse, Moderne,” in Literarische
Entdeckungsreisen: Vorfahren— Nachfahrten— Revisionen, ed. Hansjörg Bay
and Wolfgang Struck (Weimar: Böhlau, 2012); “Savage Science: Primitives, War
Neurotics, and Freud’s Uncanny Method,” American Imago 70 (Fall 2013); and
“Hermann Hesse’s Colonial Uncanny: Robert Aghion, 1913,” New German
Critique 41 (Fall 2014). Permission to reuse this material is here acknowledged.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Zilcosky, John.
Uncanny encounters : literature, psychoanalysis, and the end of alterity / John
Zilcosky.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8101-3210-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8101-3209-2
(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8101-3211-5 (ebook)
1. German literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Uncanny, The
(Psychoanalysis), in literature. 3. Travelers’ writings, German—History and
criticism. I. Title.
PT405.Z54 2015
830.90091—dc23
2015031421
For Rebecca, Charlie, and Nora

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations and Note on Translations xv
Introduction: Uncanny Encounters 3
Chapter 1
Germans in the Jungle: Hot Land and Tales of Adventure 29
Chapter 2
Europe in India: Hermann Hesse and the East 51
Chapter 3
Savage Freud: Primitives, Adventurers, and the Uncanny Method 77
Chapter 4
Exotic Europe: Modernist Ethnographies
(Mann, Hofmannsthal, Musil) 125
Epilogue: Toward a Theory of Uncanny Violence 165
Notes 183
Works Cited 227
Index 249

Illustrations
1. Map of the family’s settlement from the 1816 English edition
of The Swiss Family Robinson (close likeness of the map from
the original 1812–13 German version)— dubbed “New Switzerland”
in later editions (courtesy of University of Florida, Baldwin
Library of Historical Children’s Literature) 4
2. Map of Treasure Island, from the first book edition of Treasure
Island (1883) (courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library,
University of Toronto) 5
3. Map of Crusoe’s Island, first published in Serious Reflections
During the Life & Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,
a 1720 sequel to Robinson Crusoe (1719) (courtesy of the
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto) 6
4. Map of Africa, whose emptiness is filled with an elephant,
exotic birds, and a Cyclops (from Sebastian Münster’s
Cosmographia [1544]) 7
5. Section of Willem Blaeu’s “Nova Africa” map (1617), featuring
lions, elephants, a monkey, a crocodile, and, along the
coast, fabulous sea creatures 8
6. Typical Enlightenment map of Africa (1749), with the interior
left blank (by Jean- Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville) 9
7. An 1875 map of Africa, where the middle is still relatively
blank— marked unerforscht (uncharted) (by permission of
the Afriterra Foundation) 10
8. A map of Africa from only twenty- four years later (1899),
almost as complete as today’s maps (by permission of the
Afriterra Foundation) 11
9. Roald Amundsen’s black flag, as discovered by Robert Scott
within a few miles of the South Pole (sketched by a member
of Scott’s party, Dr. Edward A. Wilson, in January 1912) 12
10. Amundsen’s tent at the South Pole, the Norwegian flag
flying on top 13