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Uncanny Valley and Gothic Literature

January 11, 2018

academia, criticism, Gothic, literature, robots, technology, uncanny

Note: the following article on the concept of the Uncanny Valley is a modified excerpt (pp. 161-162) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see here.

The Uncanny Valley: from Robots to Monsters

The term “Uncanny Valley”, coined by the robotics researcher Masahiro Mori, refers to the hypothesis that there is a sharp drop (a “valley”, when imagined as a graph) in feelings of empathy and familiarity inspired by non-human entities as these become more human-like in appearance, manners, and movement (Liu 2010, 225).

So, a figure that is almost but not totally human-like, will inspire a more uncomfortable feeling than a figure that is more clearly artificial. The concept of the Uncanny Valley is highly relevant in the field of robotics and digital technology.

However, as its name implies, it also shares commonalities with Freud’s research and is pertinent in Gothic studies as well.

uncanny valley — Robot. No, human. No, robot. Both. Neither

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Differences between Gothic and Horror (and Science Fiction)

January 7, 2018

Criticism

academia, comparing, criticism, Gothic, horror, science fiction

Categorizing a work of fiction might initially seem like an easy task. There doesn’t seem to be anything complicated about, say, Stephen King’s The Shining. It is a horror novel; just as Bram Stoker’s Dracula belongs to the Gothic genre (kind of; more about it in a moment), or C. L. Moore’s “Vintage Season” to the science fiction genre. But there is a vast number of works that seem to be awkwardly placed in the no-man’s-land between genres. What would, then, be the differences between Gothic and horror fiction? Or Gothic and science fiction?

The question might initially seem pointless to you. Surely, one might say, the differences between Gothic and science fiction novels are huge. However, that’s not true. As Brian Aldiss has argued, science fiction is “characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode” (1986, 25). In other words, both science fiction and the Gothic deep down use similar conventions and are predicated on similar fears.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of the most famous works of the Gothic canon, is also considered to be the first science fiction novel – and for good reason. How would you categorize Frankenstein? Is it a Gothic novel, a horror novel, or a science fiction novel? And why?

differences between Gothic, horror, science fiction — Science fiction, Gothic, horror, steampunk, fantasy… What’s going on?

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The Eternal Now in Gothic Literature

December 22, 2017

Criticism

academia, criticism, Gothic, literature, time, writing

Note: this article is based on my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see here.

What Is the Eternal Now

Arthur Schopenhauer states in his 1818 The World as Will and Representation that “[the present], empirically apprehended, is the most fleeting of all … [It] constantly becomes and passes away, in that it either has been already or is still to come” (Schopenhauer 1969, 279).

The metaphysical spectrality of this undefinably small present, this malleable here-and-now, seems to exist in a conflicting relationship with the sheer weight of reality it seems to carry. Human consciousness possesses epistemological access to the present that is uniquely more reliable than that of the past or the future.

The reason is that these “contain mere concepts and phantasms … The present alone is that which always exists” (Schopenhauer 1969, 279). I refer to this present, the borders of which are ambiguous, as the eternal now or the eternal present.

The Eternal Now in the Gothic — The Eternal Now is a major part of Gothic Fiction

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