Theory, the uncanny and the sacred

This paper examines the related but different concepts of the uncanny and the sacred. Drawing on two cases – one fictional and one real – and using Žižek’s Symbolic-Real-Imaginary as an organising frame, the paper analyses how the uncanny and the sacred are connected. It then proceeds to examine the role of theorising in sacralising the uncanny and profaning the sacred. Finally, it briefly discusses how theory might be re-enchanted.

Anaphoric choices in Japanese fictional novels: the discourse arrangement of noun phrases, zero and third person pronouns

By examining Japanese fictional novels, this article will discuss how anaphoric devices (noun phrases (NPs), third person pronouns (TPPs), and zero anaphors) are selected and arranged in a given discourse. The traditional view of anaphora considers the co-referential relationship between anaphoric devices to be syntagmatic; that is, a pronoun, for example, refers back to its antecedent. It also declares the hierarchical order of information values between anaphoric devices; NPs are semantically the most informative, indicating an episode boundary, and pronouns less informative. Furthermore, zero anaphora is the most referentially transparent, showing the most accessibility of a topic. However, real text shows the contrary. NPs occur frequently while there is no apparent discourse boundary, and the same episode is continuous. This is because zero anaphors and TPPs (if they occur) break down readily due to the nature of a forthcoming sentence and the NP is reinstated, in order to continue the same topic in a given discourse. Therefore, the article opposes the traditional view of anaphora. Based on the concept of text processing, using ‘mental representations’, this article will determine certain occurrence patterns of the three anaphoric devices.

The uncanny valley, notes on the realism of “living” creatures in digital games and their relationships with the player

Neste artigo argumenta-se que as simulações numéricas fomentam e exploram relações complexas entre o jogador e o sistema cibernético da máquina que com este se relaciona através da jogabilidade, ou seja, da real aplicação às regras de jogo de tácticas e estratégias usadas pelo participante durante o seu trajecto na aplicação lúdica. Considera-se que o espaço mágico imposto pelo tabuleiro de jogo é mais do que um espaço de confusão entre real e artificial mas antes se apresenta como uma cortina ou interface entre o corpo próprio do participante e a simulação digital inerente ao sistema computacional.

Engendered Conversations: Gender Subversion Through Fictional Dialogue in Lawrence, Hemingway and Forster

This dissertation examines gendered fictional dialogue in popular works by D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway and E.M. Forster, including Howards End (1910), The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). I apply Judith Halberstam’s notion of female masculinity to direct speech, to explore how speech traits inform modernist literary aesthetics. My introduction frames this discussion in sociolinguistics, Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, M.M. Bakhtin’s discourse theory, and gender studies. It provides an opportunity to establish experimental dialogue techniques, and the manipulation of gendered talk, in transgressive texts including James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) and Radcyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928). The first chapter discusses taboos and dialect in D.H. Lawrence’s fictional dialogue. The second chapter establishes gender subversion as a crucial element in Ernest Hemingway’s dialogue style. The third chapter contrasts Forster’s latently gendered speech with his techniques of dialect emphasis and dialect suppression. Finally, my conclusion discusses gender identity in the poetry of Dorothy Parker and Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, and the temporality of gender in “Time Passes” from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). New Woman characters like Lady Brett Ashley typified a crucial moment in women’s liberation. They not only subverted stereotypes of womanhood through their dress or sexual freedom, they also adopted/adapted masculine idiom to shock, to rebel against and challenge male dominance. Different speech acts incited fashionable slang, became a political protest symbol or inspired psychoanalytic theory. The intriguing functions of women’s masculine speech in early twentieth century fiction establishes the need to examine additional connections between gender and talk in literary studies.

Fictional characters' emotional state representation : What is its degree of specificity?

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Humans ignore motion and stereo cues in favor of a fictional stable world

As we move through the world, our eyes acquire a sequence of images. The information from this sequence is sufficient to determine the structure of a three-dimensional scene, up to a scale factor determined by the distance that the eyes have moved [1, 2]. Previous evidence shows that the human visual system accounts for the distance the observer has walked [3,4] and the separation of the eyes [5-8] when judging the scale, shape, and distance of objects. However, in an immersive virtual-reality environment, observers failed to notice when a scene expanded or contracted, despite having consistent information about scale from both distance walked and binocular vision. This failure led to large errors in judging the size of objects. The pattern of errors cannot be explained by assuming a visual reconstruction of the scene with an incorrect estimate of interocular separation or distance walked. Instead, it is consistent with a Bayesian model of cue integration in which the efficacy of motion and disparity cues is greater at near viewing distances. Our results imply that observers are more willing to adjust their estimate of interocular separation or distance walked than to accept that the scene has changed in size.

Uncanny Valley revisited

The 'Uncanny Valley' was conceived in 1970 by Prof Masahiro Mori and details a possible relationship between an object's appearance or motion and how people perceive the object. Initially this research was used without validation. Modern technology has enabled initial investigations, summarised here, that conclude further work is required. A good design guideline for humanoid robots is desired if humanoid robots are to assist with an increasingly elderly population, but not yet possible due to technological constraints. Prosthetics is considered a good resource as the user interaction is comparable to the anticipated level of human-robot interaction and there is a wide range of existing devices.

‘Uncanny’ repetitions in Lillian Hellman’s 'The Children’s Hour'

This article addresses Lilian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour in terms of “the uncanny,” that is as a play concerned with doubling and instability. Although this is not in itself an original approach the play, it is claimed that the unsettling iterations of the work can be understood to extend further than has been read within the handful of critical accounts thus far produced. In following Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny” and Judith Butler’s ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination” in their understanding of the disruptive effects of retrospection and repetition, the article works through various threats to identity and structure in Hellman’s play, concluding with a questioning account of recent moves to situate the work within a contextual frame of performance history.

NEW NOTES ON ""THE UNCANNY""

NEW NOTES ON ""THE UNCANNY"" The present paper expands the horizon of meanings associated with the concept of ""the uncanny"" (usually taken as an allegory for the return of the repressed). The narrative condition of the uncanny (or the experience of the limits of the ego), its relation to the primitive constitution of the psyche, the aspect of repetition, as well as its association with the ""fetish"" and the ""relic"" will be focused. It is our understanding that the concept of the uncanny should receive more attention from the psychoanalytic community. In fact, more attention and developments have been given to it from subjects as Linguistics, Literary Studies, Philosophy and Aesthetics, in general, than from Psychoanalysis itself Besides reflecting the neurotic functioning, the opposition homely/un-homely (uncanny) also refers to more primitive distinctions, such as self/not-self and inside/outside. The paper also addresses the romance The sea of fertility, by Yukio Mishima, so as to point out a singular aspect of the reading experience. Finally, the ideas of the fetish and of the relic will be analyzed from the point of view of the uncanny.

Zoë Wicomb's Ghosts. Uncanny Translocations in David's Story and The One That Got Away

This essay analyses Zoë Wicomb's novel David's Story and her latest collection of short stories, The One That Got Away, through the lense of cosmopolitanism and Jacques Derrida's concept of ‘hauntology’. Wicomb is a cosmopolitan author in a very precise sense: an author who embeds locally specific stories in a complex intertextual, historical and transnational web of cross-references. As settings, characters and objects move between Scotland and South Africa, it appears that the histories of these countries are mutually haunted by each other. Uncanny encounters with the past, and with memorials and art objects that take on a spectral quality, evoke an increasing sense of disorientation on the part of protagonists and readers alike. Assumptions about place, history and identity are thus constantly undermined and reconfigured.