Tuesday 8 November 2016

Definition


Working Definition:
For me, the feminine uncanny draws (consciously or unconsciously) upon, and doubles back on Freud’s psychoanalytical concept of the uncanny as a way to problematize normative constructs of the female in a patriarchal space.
The feminine uncanny appears in the evocation of something unsettling and uncomfortable. It disturbs the normal and undermines notions of stability.
By replicating empowering aspects of the (un)homely the feminine uncanny objects to the repressive qualities of the home. The feminine uncanny exploits the duality of the unheimlich and heimlich to create an indirect resistance to and salutation to both. In doing so the feminine uncanny creates a feminist tension around the domestic.
The feminine uncanny is evoked in the placing together in a space the strangely familiar materials of the female (body) and the everyday object so as to reimagine their inter-relationship. Thus the feminine uncanny troubles the corporeal and psychic identity of the feminine in order to dislocate patriarchal authority. This reimagining of gendered body and everyday object suggests the development of a non-repressive language of the domestic that enables a different kind of femininity to emerge.