Uncanny Inheritances: With Some Distance and Steady Ground to Stand On

Abstract

Since Freud, in his famous text “The Uncanny” (2019), literature and psychoanalysis have been on the threshold regarding the material of their work, even though they operate in different layers of the psychic life. The unfamiliar refers to what is “long been intimate,” in which the meanings of what has long been familiar are overdetermined and, furthermore, adds the dimension of an excess, of what is too much and surpasses the somewhat familiar. Based on this Freudian word-concept, the present work seeks to think about the resonances between familiarity and strangeness around the issue of inheritance in three poems by Brazilian writers. To do so, three issues are highlighted from the Freudian text: the first is the language itself, a place that provokes this split between home and strangeness, between mother-tongue and foreign language. Second, what derives from infantile sources around Oedipus and castration in their unfoldings and modulations, emphasizing the issue of the double and its defense against annihilation through the figuration of dreamlike and poetic language. Finally, the factor of involuntary repetition, according to which even an innocent element can become unfamiliar, imposing on us the idea of an inescapable destiny. However, around language, the double, and involuntary repetition, through a cross-reading of the poems “Minha primeira barata” by Danielle Magalhães, “Herança” by Bruna Mitrano, and “Carrie” by Mariana Godoy, we will explore in their writings the dimension of familial repetition, from which one inherits, identifies, and, many times, endures the idea of the fateful. Confronted with inescapable repetition, we are also interested in reading in the poems the possible exits and procedures developed against the family inheritance, as a way to enact revenge, distance, and another way to position oneself, still having, underfoot, some ground.