« ... Heimlich est un mot dont le sens se développe vers une ambivalence, jusqu’à ce qu’enfin il se rencontre avec son contraire unheimlich. Unheimlich est, d’une manière quelconque, un genre de heimlich » ( Freud, L’inquiétante étrangeté, II). The first French translations of the term unheimlich and its substantive das Unheimliche, such as « inquiétante étrangeté », « l’inquiétante familiarité », « l’étrangement inquiétant », « l’étrange familier », amongst others, seem to miss the very ambiguity of the term. Marie Bonaparte’s 1933 French translation is one case that preserves the term in German to communicate the “strangeness” or “uncanniness” of the notion itself.

Historically, several concepts have come close to the Unheimliche without, however, coinciding with it: for example, “déjà-vu,” which even become a suggested English translation of the term; the “illusion of Doppelgänger” or, more recently, Kristeva’s works on the abject.

While the experience of the Unheimliche is, according to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, the return of that which is hidden, the manifestation of what should remain hidden, it is better characterized, according to Ernst Jentsch, by the confusion of the boundary between the animate and the inanimate. For Freud, however, the Unheimliche is situated at the intersection of literature aand psychoanalysis, and should be examined for itself: « Dans la fiction, il existe bien des moyens de provoquer des effets d’inquiétante étrangeté qui, dans la vie, n'existent pas » (Freud, L’Inquiétante étrangeté, III).

The deterritorialization of this term out of the psychoanalytic domain did not occur without reverberations. Perhaps due in part to the Germanophobia and anti-Semitism that affected the reception of Freud’s and his German contemporaries’ works in France, this concept was explored in literature more thoroughly in Anglosaxone milieux than in French ones. Paradoxically, however, psychoanalysis in the 21st century « jouit en France d’une situation unique au monde, [qu’elle] doit à son histoire [...] ainsi qu’à sa présence, de multiples façons, dans la culture » (Journal français de psychiatrie, 2004/1 n°21), all the while maintaining ambiguous relationships to the fields of literature and theater.The Department of French and Italian’s graduate conference will thus question the definitions and redefinitions of the Unheimliche in Francophone studies which have both preceded and followed its conceptualization in the domain of psychoanalysis. We welcome abstracts for papers on all literary periods and from all literary domains in the French language (including comparative literature) that use the Unheimliche (or neighboring concepts) as a framework for analysis or are in conversation with it. We also encourage performative proposals, such as readings, on-stage performances, and visual arts.

Speakers

• Shanna Jean-Baptiste (Rutgers University)
• Richard Dumy (Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique)

Sponsors

• Princeton University Humanities Council
• Department of Comparative Literature
• Department of French and Italian
• Department of German
• The Graduate School

Call for Papers

• Possible Subjects
  • Esthetic of the uncanny, the sinister, and unease
  • Questions related to the deterritorialization of psychological concepts in French-language literature
  • “Unease” in translation
  • Questions of liminality
  • Confusion/tension and their proximity to the Unheimliche
  • The Uncanny Valley and science-fiction
  • Influence of French psychoanalysts (Angelo Hesnard, René Laforgue, Marie Bonaparte) on literature of their time
  • Lacan and Freud on the question of the Unheimliche, the reterritorialization of this debate in the literary domain
  • Re-reading of psychoanalytic canon (Maupassant’s Le Horla, Don Juan, Apollinaitre, Breton)
  • Discharge of bodily substances and their relationship to the subject
  • The scapegoat, alienation of the familiar
  • Gaslighting in literature
  • Feeling of strangeness related to exile and migration
  • Intercultural exchanges

Graduate students are invited to send their abstracts to Hervé Goerger ([email protected]) et Grace Yan ([email protected]) before January 6, 2024. Presentations will be in person, between 15-20 minutes, in English or in French. Abstracts must include a title, a summary (250-300 words), a biography (100 words), your institutional affiliation, and your contact information. Decisions will be communicated before January 28. The conference will take place on March 29, 2024, at the Department of French and Italian at Princeton.

Conference Program

9:15 AM: Registration and Breakfast

10:00 AM: Opening Keynote

• Moderator: Atim Mackin Shanna-Jean Baptiste, Rutgers University
  • The Uncanny, Vodou, and Haitian Futurities
    • Shanna Jean-Baptiste, Rutgers University

11:00 AM: In discussion with Shanna Jean-Baptiste

• Panel Chair: Grace Yan
  • Le queer dans la fiction africaine francophone : étrange et familier
    • Atim Mackin, Harvard University

• Break

11:30 AM: Panel 1

• Ailleurs dans le monde / Elsewhere in the World
  • Chair: Isabelle Chen
    • L’inquiétante étrangeté et le bouc émissaire dans Le Mangeur de Ying Chen
      • Jingyun Song, Université de Montréal
    • La rencontre étrange et inquiétante avec l’altérité islandaise dans Temps glaciaires de Fred Vargas
      • Diane Gauthier, Université du Québec à Montréal
    • Unheimliche and Violence: A Comparison Between Sinha’s Assommons les pauvres ! and Smith’s NW
      • Carola Paolucci, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
    • La mémoire en échec : répétition de l'histoire, inquiétante étrangeté et post-mémoire dans les écrits de la diaspora libanaise
      • Renate Mattar, Columbia University

1:00 PM: Lunch

• (A light vegetarian lunch will be provided.)

2:00 PM: Panel 2

• Canon étrange / Uncanny Canon
  • Chair: Hannah Grunow
    • Stendhal et l’horreur anonyme
      • Zoe Li, Cornell University
    • La métamorphose de la folie dans la nouvelle Lokis de Prosper Mérimée
      • Simon Prahl, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

3:00 PM: Panel 3

•   L’étrangeté de la langue / Strangeness of Language
  • Chair: Bill Hamlett
    • Habiter l’espace du mot avec Henri Maldiney et André Dubouchet
      • Olivier Moser, Paris-Sorbonne Université
    • Le traducteur révélateur : l’inquiétante étrangeté de la langue de Claude Gavreau
      • Astrid Novat, Université de Montréal / Université de Bourgogne
    • Das unheimliche et les figures de style de Tawada
      • Anna Bourges-Celaries, Université de Montréal

• Break

5:00 PM: Panel 4

• Corps et théâtralité / Bodies and Theatricality
  • Chair: Matthieu Dutil
    • Lacan, l’angoisse et l’ectopie du regard
      • Justin Leduc-Frenette, McGill University
    • Generic Uncanniness, Poetic Liminality: Ducasse’s Les Chants de Maldoror, Le Grand Guignol, and Monstrous Theatricality
      • Kieron Cindric, Yale University

• Break

6:00 PM: Closing Keynote

• « Être anormalement soi » : genre, jeu et nouveaux possibles d’incarnations
  • Richard Dumy, Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique