Uncanny

Definition

The uncanny (das Unheimliche, the "unhomely") names the disturbing experience of the familiar turning strange — the homely (heimlich) collapsing into its opposite. Rooted in the romantic sublime and the nineteenth-century haunted house, it was theorized by Freud (1919) as the "return of the repressed": "everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light" (Schelling). For architecture, the uncanny is potent because it captures the modern condition of estrangement, alienation, exile, and homelessness — the dark double of the dwelling-tradition's affirmation of being-at-home. Vidler's key claim is that the uncanny is not a property of any building but a representation of a mental state of projection: "there is no such thing as an uncanny architecture, but simply architecture that, from time to time and for different purposes, is invested with uncanny qualities."

Key Thinkers

• Anthony Vidler — the architectural uncanny: the unhomely as the modern condition; the haunted house, the metropolis, and contemporary architecture's exploitation of estrangement.
• Martin Heidegger — the unheimlich as the fundamental condition of anxiety; "homelessness is coming to be the destiny of the world."
• Gaston Bachelard — the nostalgic, "oneiric house" against which the unhomely is posed.
• Theodor Adorno — "estrangement from the world is a moment of art"; the uncanny as the secret movement of modern art.

Related Concepts

• Dwelling — the uncanny is the unhomely double of being-at-home; the slippage between the two is the uncanny's core.
• Warped Space — the psychological and aesthetic distortion of space as projection of the anxious subject; the uncanny's extension to the metropolis.
• Heterotopia — the counter-site that disturbs the syntax of space, sharing the uncanny's logic of otherness.
• Atmosphere — the felt, pre-intellectual impression of place; the uncanny as its disturbing, unhomely register.
• Embodiment — the body as the locus of the uncanny's doubling, dismemberment, and estrangement.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Being and Time (Heidegger 1927) — the ontological foundation of uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit) as "not-being-at-home"; anxiety reveals Dasein as individualized, thrown, facing the "nothing" of the world. "In anxiety one feels 'uncanny'... 'not-being-at-home' [das Nichtzuhause-sein]" (§40, H. 186).
• The Architectural Uncanny (Vidler 1992)
• Warped Space (Vidler 2000)
• Troubles in Theory Part VI: From Utopia to Heterotopia (Vidler 2008)
• Deleuze and Space (Buchanan & Lambert eds. 2005) — the "any-space-whatever" and the "Outside" as forms of the unhomely
• Freud for Architects (Abell 2020) — the psychoanalytic foundation of the uncanny; Freud's "return of the repressed" as the mechanism by which the familiar turns strange; the uncanny as the dark double of the homely.

Open Questions

• Can the uncanny function as a critical instrument for architecture, or does its exploitation risk becoming mere "decoration or caricature" that trivializes real homelessness?
• How does the uncanny relate to the wiki's Atmosphere and Dwelling concepts — is the unhomely the dark double of the homely dwelling that Heidegger, Norberg-Schulz, and Pallasmaa affirm?