This seminar series introduces an intersectional feminist approach to the uncanny, one of the most influential and flawed concepts that psychoanalysis has bequeathed to the arts. In the uncanny, which Freud famously described as the disturbing fallout of the return of the repressed, feminism discovered an unexpected ally in its attempt to forge subversive countercultural strategies, to claim a place in the canons of creative practice and critical theory, and to revolutionize (or explode) them in doing so. Such strategies involve a process of defamiliarisation, namely of uncovering the strangeness of what is assumed to be known, established or ordinary, which is tinged with an indictment of the hierarchical division between the familiar and the unfamiliar in the first place. The feminist uncanny is shaped by a preoccupation with the metaphorical and material links between social oppression and symbolic repression: the oppressed have an affinity for the cultural unconscious and an interest in mining it.
Please bring to the first seminar an image or artifact that you associate with the uncanny and be prepared to introduce it to the group. These will be assembled in a virtual cabinet of curiosities that will help determine the focus of the series.
-
Seminar 1
Mon, Oct 21, 202412:30 pm to 2:30 pm -
Seminar 2
Tue, Oct 22, 202412:30 pm to 2:30 pm -
Seminar 3
Wed, Oct 23, 202412:30 pm to 2:30 pm -
Public Talk: The Feminist Uncanny as Party Crasher
Thu, Oct 24, 202412:00 pm
Dr. Alexandra Kokoli researches feminist artistic and activist practices. She works as Associate Professor in Visual Culture at Middlesex University and Senior Research Associate at VIAD, University of Johannesburg. She has published widely, including the edited collections Feminism Reframed; Susan Hiller: The Provisional Texture of Reality; (co-ed with Deborah Cherry), Art into Life: Essays on Tracey Emin; and the monograph The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice. She co-leads the Transnational Early Career Research Network (TECReN) in Visual and Performing Arts, funded by the British Academy. Her research on the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common has been supported by the Paul Mellon Centre and the Leverhulme Trust.
Castle, Terry (1995), The Female Thermometer: 18th-century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Cavarero, Adriana (2009), Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, trans. William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press)
Coly, Ayo A. (2019) Postcolonial Hauntologies: African Women’s Discourses of the Female Body (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press)
D’Souza, Aruna (2018) Whitewalling: Art, race & Protest in 3 acts (New York: Badlands)
Enwezor, Okwui (2009) The Unhomely: 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville Paperback (Barcelona: ActarD)
Kokoli, Alexandra (2016) The Feminist Uncanny (London: Bloomsbury)
Kristeva, Julia (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press)
Kristeva, Julia (1994) Strangers to Ourselves (New York: Columbia University Press)
Larratt-Smith, Philip (ed.) (2012) Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed (London: Violette Editions)
Masschelein, Anneleen (2011), The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory (Albany: SUNY Press)
Schmahmann, Brenda (ed.) (2021), Iconic Works of Art by Feminists and Gender Activists (London: Routledge)
Solomon-Godeau, Abigail (2006) ‘Taunting and Haunting: Critical Tactics in a “Minor” Mode’. In C. Armstrong and C. de Zegher (eds.), Women Artists at the Millenium (Cambridge MA: MIT Press), pp. 371-401
Walsh, Maria (2013) Art and Psychoanalysis (London: IB Tauris)
Woolley, Dawn (2022) Consuming the Body: Capitalism, Social Media and Commodification (London: Bloomsbury Press)