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6 Concluding Remarks In order to deal with the rapidly expanding corpus of definitions and applications of the concept, this genealogy has rigorously followed the sticky path of the signifiers “uncanny—unheimlich—inquiétante étrangeté” in various indexes and search engines. This led to the most divergent themes, objects, topics, domains, associations, affiliations, deviations, and disseminations. The material constraint also entailed openness to other, non-canonical and forgotten sources on the uncanny. The material that has been unearthed for this study resulted in a specific picture of the conceptualization process. While the (un)concept of the uncanny is mostly situated in (post)structuralist circles, there are other, less well-known conceptualizations, leading back to Otto, Schelling, Heidegger, and others. Within Freud’s oeuvre, the ambivalent and hesitating structure of the essay is mirrored by the position of the concept in his work. In post-Freudian psychoanalysis, the influence of the Lacanian tradition on the conceptualization of the uncanny cannot be overestimated even if it is in a sense only at the beginning, since Lacan’s most explicit commentary on the uncanny did not appear before the twenty-first century and is not part of the Lacanian canon. In the British tradition of psychoanalysis, the uncanny managed to survive in a more clinical environment. In recent years, it has resurfaced again in a more creative form in the work of, for instance, Christopher Bollas. In the field of deconstruction, Derrida’s early work on the uncanny in “The Double Session” is perpetuated by several thinkers close to him. Some of them, like Cixous or Weber have become landmark studies of the uncanny in their own right. Others who operated on the same scene, like Kofman or Rey have been equally “haunted” by the uncanny in their work but are much less well known. The notion of “stickiness,” a vague yet material metaphor, indicates the more subterraneous factors in conceptualization, both on an 155 156 The Unconcept individual and on an intersubjective level. When examining the status of the word “unheimlich” in Freud’s work, various indexes are remarkably inconsistent, casting doubt on the conceptual value and position of the uncanny in Freud’s work. A conceptual gesture, as performed by Freud, does not merely consist of drawing attention to a word and defining a concept; it also affects a larger discourse. This is why words that have hitherto been virtually ignored can become significant and important much later. This kind of attention to the signifier and to minor, seemingly insignificant details is intricately bound up with the method of psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic practice, but the marginal position of the essay also facilitated its isolation and detachment from the confines of that framework. This allowed “The Uncanny” to gradually become a model for another type of knowledge operating in the margin of a more general “Theory” governed by ambivalence, uncertainty, repetition, haunting, and fiction. The repeated insistence on the marginality of the essay in the rereadings of the essay, even when it was already quite well known and established, also reveals the underlying desires of a critic: to discover and to cast a new, original light, a quest for the postromantic, negative, or secular Sublime through a metaphorical, rhetorical, and performative style, or an attempt to contribute to and institutionalize the canon of (post)structuralist Theory. Theory, according to Rabaté, is a cyclical phenomenon that “tends to describe loops and circles” (Rabaté 2002, 2). Looking at the history of the uncanny from a discursive perspective reveals how much the conceptualization process consists of repetitions and loops on the edge of conceptuality until a tipping point is reached, tilting over into canonization. Indeed, the singular acts of rereading “The Uncanny,” whether strong or weak, constitute repeated gestures of conceptualization through which a body of texts from various domains is appropriated. In this way, a canon of Theory and theoretical concepts was formed by repetition rather than by definition, that works through various subdomains and trends of research and teaching in the humanities, and that serves as common currency between them. As a concept that self-reflexively also signifies its opposite, as an affect and an effect, as a theoretical fiction, and as a flimsy label, the uncanny’s operation is often determined by a specific form of stickiness that has become a “style.” One of the preconditions for the uncanny to become a concept was its association with a more or less stable corpus of texts and genres that has remained a...

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