Centrist Simon Steele Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I am working through a masters program (literary theory), and since I have worked with Marxism and Heidegger already (Nietzsche last semester), I thought I would give Freud a try, but I am unclear on a couple things surrounding him, so I thought I'd pose a couple questions here if any of you happened to know off the top of your heads. I'm going to review my idea tomorrow so I'll get feedback, but I'd rather go in with this step done, and I'm having trouble clearing it up from Freud's text, "the Uncanny." Have any of you read it? I am trying to figure out if his theory of the Uncanny only applies to the oedipal complex/fear of castration/fear of removal of eyes, etc., or if I can make an argument that he is saying the uncanny exists in anything that is repressed and brings up scary, fearful feelings that seem foreign (but really aren't). In the essay he focuses on the castration stuff, of course, but I was wondering if anyone who knew Freud better than I--is this a requirement for anything read through a Freudian lens? If I do a reading through a Freudian lens must the characters either fear castration or envy penises? Serious questions, I know they may seem not to be, but I feel like every time Freud explains his theories he uses these examples, thus making me question if we can explicate without these examples. I would like to look at the uncanny in a text without all that oedipal/electra stuff added in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ormond Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Unfortunately "The Uncanny" is not one of Freud's essays I've read so I can't comment on that particular work. Freud would have believed that all humans either fear castration or envy penises, but he wouldn't necessarily have tried to explain everything in the human mind as being directly connected to that. After all, oral and anal fixations happen before the Oedipal complex stuff. :) But he may have been using Oedipal concepts exclusively in that particular essay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Summah Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I'm not sure this will be useful, but some feminist literary crititicism uses psychonanalitic theory, but not Freudian so much, more lacanian. I had to analyze literature using this framework (or needed it to understand some essays) for some lit classes in college (and I was comp lit, so I did take a lot of lit classes). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centrist Simon Steele Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Yeah I hate all the genital stuff, and I really want to avoid it. We are doing Lacan this week, but I feel like since it is my first time with it, it is too late in the game to try to get a handle on it and then try to apply it my final. I don't know. I'll give it a try. We're doing the Purloined Letter which I imagine is pretty common as far as that goes. I really do love the Uncanny essay in general but I'll be damned if he doesn't tie castration into it too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ormond Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Yeah I hate all the genital stuff, and I really want to avoid it. We are doing Lacan this week, but I feel like since it is my first time with it, it is too late in the game to try to get a handle on it and then try to apply it my final. I don't know. I'll give it a try. We're doing the Purloined Letter which I imagine is pretty common as far as that goes. I really do love the Uncanny essay in general but I'll be damned if he doesn't tie castration into it too. I suppose you could point out that technically Freud used the wrong word with "castration" since medically castration is removal of the testicles, not the penis. But penilectomy anxiety doesn't have the same ring to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Summah Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Are you doing Derrida and Johnson too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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