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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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Writing and Memory: Why It Is Important for Authors

January 10, 2018

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

experience, fiction, growing up, literature, nostalgia, time, writing

3 comments

I have talked in the past about nostalgia and reminiscence, and in this article I will emphasize the role of writing and memory in the context of writing fiction.

Many people are under the impression fiction is a process where you just “come up with things”, as if from thin air. This is inaccurate. Deep down, writing fiction is about telling a truth (often a secret or unpleasant one) in a different way.

And so, experiencing becomes an operative element: before you write you must experience. Writing and memory, therefore, go hand-in-hand. The diagram below should give you a quick idea.

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Authorial Intention and the Chaos of Meaning

January 9, 2018

Literature

comparing, creativity, literature, meaning, subjectivity, writing

3 comments

Authorial intention must be among the most perverse – yes, perverse – things in connection with literary criticism. By the term “authorial intention” we mean, self-evidently, what the author’s intention was when writing a certain piece of work.

In other words, authorial intention refers to expressing a meaning the writer intended. For many people, there really isn’t any mystery: Writer A wrote book B, therefore the meaning expressed in book B is what writer A intended. However, as we will see in more detail further below, this is an excessively simplistic approach.

Problems begin once we realize that there never really is only one reader. Again, this might appear as self-evident, but it is important to emphasize the repercussions: Are we really certain that reader C and reader D have interpreted book B in the same (or even similar) manner?

Indeed, even the same reader can have two different responses to the same book on a subsequent reading. Think of a book you loved as a teenager – let’s assume, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Think of the second time you read that book, perhaps years later. Some things didn’t feel as interesting, while others you discovered for the first time. You had two readerly responses, being one individual, for the same book.

authorial intention, chaos, meaning — Chaos, meaning, and authorial intention. What’s the connection?

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