Freud writes that ‘an uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality, or when a symbol takes over the full functions of the thing it symbolizes, and so on’ (Freud 1919, p.367). Playing with the effacement between reality and imagination inherent in the act of writing, Dr Zayneb Allak’s work on the uncanny frequently loses its grip on reality: when we write a chapter or read a poem, she wonders, is it possible to know where imagination ends and reality begins?
References:
Freud, Sigmund, ‘The “Uncanny” (1919), The Penguin Freud Library Vol. 14: Art and Literature, trans. James Strachey (London: Penguin, 1990).
The Puppet Boy
from New Walk 13, 2016
