A Phenomenology of the Alien

A Phenomenology of the Alien: Encounters with the Weird and Inscrutable Other considers both literal and figurative experiences of the alien from a psychological, psychoanalytic, and philosophical perspective.

A Phenomenology of the Alien: Encounters with the Weird and Inscrutable Other considers both literal and figurative experiences of the alien from a psychological, psychoanalytic and philosophical perspective.Throughout the book, the authors wrestle with the unexplained, ineffable, unspeakable, sublime, uncanny, abject and Mieville's abcanny. This collection provides phenomenologies of encounters with the inscrutably alien from lights in the sky, dark corners of Weird fictional landscapes, architecture, technology, or the clinical symptom. The chapters examine fictional and nonfictional encounters with what exceeds the capacity to "make sense," taking a new approach to the topic of alterity and inviting the reader to examine how these encounters reflect our contemporary condition culturally, individually, clinically, theologically and philosophically.Bridging cultural, psychoanalytic, literary, clinical, media, and religious studies, the novel approaches in this volume will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

Autorentext

Aaron B. Daniels, PhD, is an associate teaching professor, mindfulness fellow, and leader of the Psychological Humanities Research Group at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Inhalt

List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Foreword: Nietzsche and Nihilism: Opening to the Dimension of the Other; Chapter 1: Introduction: The Abcanny: Encounters with the Inscrutably Alien; Chapter 2: The Divinalien: On Divine Alterity; Chapter 3: The Alien Other: Cosmology and Social Transmission of UFO Narratives; Chapter 4: The Human and the Smart House: Speculative Psychology and Systems of Attachment; Chapter 5: Repetition and Return in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy; Chapter 6: Alienation, Obsession, and Enthrallment in Thomas Ligotti's "The Small People," "Nethescurial," and other Weird Fiction; Chapter 7: The Alien Inside: Jean Laplanche's Internal Other in the Fiction of Brian Evenson and the Case of Ana; Index.