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The Urban Uncanny
The Urban Uncanny explores through ten engaging essays the slippage or mismatch between our expectations of the city--as the organised and familiar environments in which citizens live, work, and go about their lives--and the often surprising and unsettling experiences it evokes. The city is uncanny when it reveals itself in new and unexpected light; when its streets, buildings, and people suddenly appear strange, out of place, and not quite right.
Bringing together a variety of approaches, including psychoanalysis, historical and contemporary case study of cities, urban geography, film and literary critique, the essays explore some of the unsettling mismatches between city and citizen in order to make sense of each, and to gauge the wellbeing of city life more generally. Essays examine a number of cities, including Edmonton, London, Paris, Oxford, Las Vegas, Berlin and New York, and address a range of issues, including those of memory, death, anxiety, alienation, and identity. Delving into the complex repercussions of contemporary mass urban development, The Urban Uncanny opens up the pathological side of cities, both real and imaginary.
This interdisciplinary collection provides unparalleled insights into the urban uncanny that will be of interest to academics and students of urban studies, urban geography, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, social studies and film studies, and to anyone interested in the darker side of city life.
Bringing together a variety of approaches, including psychoanalysis, historical and contemporary case study of cities, urban geography, film and literary critique, the essays explore some of the unsettling mismatches between city and citizen in order to make sense of each, and to gauge the wellbeing of city life more generally. Essays examine a number of cities, including Edmonton, London, Paris, Oxford, Las Vegas, Berlin and New York, and address a range of issues, including those of memory, death, anxiety, alienation, and identity. Delving into the complex repercussions of contemporary mass urban development, The Urban Uncanny opens up the pathological side of cities, both real and imaginary.
This interdisciplinary collection provides unparalleled insights into the urban uncanny that will be of interest to academics and students of urban studies, urban geography, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, social studies and film studies, and to anyone interested in the darker side of city life.
206 pages, Hardcover
First published January 7, 2017
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 25, 2016
A multidisciplinary collection of studies of studies of urban spaces with a rather puzzling title. Like many collections that include scholarly contributions from assorted authors, it is sometimes hard to find a coherent thread, although many of the individual chapters are quite thought-provoking.
-Owen Evans. Going Underground: Margins, dreams, and dark spaces in Nimrod Antal’s “Kontroll.”
A fascinating exploration of a 2003 Hungarian film that follows a group of underground ticket inspectors in the depths of the transportation system underneath Budapest.
-Ruth Meyer. Shadows over Oxford: Memories, murder, mystery, and Morse. An evocative Jungian analysis of the “city of dreaming spires” through the lens of the murder mystery series, “Inspector Morse.”
-Hessen R. Zoeller. This Hated City: ‘Deadmonton’ – Edmonton’s alter-ego.
A thoughtful analysis of a city that lives as a scapegoat in the shadow of the Canadian psyche.
-Erin-Marie Legacey. Cities of the Dead: The Catacombs and Pere Lachaise Cemetery in post-Revolutionary Paris.
A consideration of the role of the establishment of cemeteries that were set apart from the city in establishing the modern social order of Paris.
-Ben Moore. Ruptures in the City: Retrospective memory in Benjamin’s Paris and Koolhaas’s New York.
A rather dry exploration of urban “junk space” through the lens of two literary texts.
-Lucy Huskinson. Pathologizing the City: Archetypal psychology and the built environment.
A perceptive analysis of the tensions in the attitudes of archetypal psychologists, particularly James Hillman, toward built versus natural environments.
-Phyllis Mazzocchi. The Wandering Architecture of City and Psyche.
An intriguing study of Guy Debord and the Situationist International and the idea of “drifting” as an approach to experiencing a city such as Paris.
-Catherine L. Dollard. Geographies of Loss and Ruptured Identities: the divided cities of Berlin and Nicosia.
A very interesting study of the physical and psychological barriers imposed by artificial division of urban spaces.
-Esse Viitanen. Nostalgic Maps: Wandering in a disappearing cityscape in “Mies, joka ei osannut sanoa ei [The Man Who Could Not Say No].”
An evocative analysis of a 1975 Finnish film that explores the tensions between urbanization and traditional communities in a fictional version of Helsinki.
-Daan Wesselman. Reconfiguring the Urban Body in Delillo’s “Cosmopolis.”
An exploration of the marginalization of the body in individuals engaging with the city in a 2003 fictional Manhattan.
This last chapter suggests a thread that does run through almost all of the chapters. Except for Ruth Meyer in Oxford, none of the authors seems to have any physical actual encounter with a city. The book might be better approached with the expectation of disembodiment rather than uncanniness.
-Owen Evans. Going Underground: Margins, dreams, and dark spaces in Nimrod Antal’s “Kontroll.”
A fascinating exploration of a 2003 Hungarian film that follows a group of underground ticket inspectors in the depths of the transportation system underneath Budapest.
-Ruth Meyer. Shadows over Oxford: Memories, murder, mystery, and Morse. An evocative Jungian analysis of the “city of dreaming spires” through the lens of the murder mystery series, “Inspector Morse.”
-Hessen R. Zoeller. This Hated City: ‘Deadmonton’ – Edmonton’s alter-ego.
A thoughtful analysis of a city that lives as a scapegoat in the shadow of the Canadian psyche.
-Erin-Marie Legacey. Cities of the Dead: The Catacombs and Pere Lachaise Cemetery in post-Revolutionary Paris.
A consideration of the role of the establishment of cemeteries that were set apart from the city in establishing the modern social order of Paris.
-Ben Moore. Ruptures in the City: Retrospective memory in Benjamin’s Paris and Koolhaas’s New York.
A rather dry exploration of urban “junk space” through the lens of two literary texts.
-Lucy Huskinson. Pathologizing the City: Archetypal psychology and the built environment.
A perceptive analysis of the tensions in the attitudes of archetypal psychologists, particularly James Hillman, toward built versus natural environments.
-Phyllis Mazzocchi. The Wandering Architecture of City and Psyche.
An intriguing study of Guy Debord and the Situationist International and the idea of “drifting” as an approach to experiencing a city such as Paris.
-Catherine L. Dollard. Geographies of Loss and Ruptured Identities: the divided cities of Berlin and Nicosia.
A very interesting study of the physical and psychological barriers imposed by artificial division of urban spaces.
-Esse Viitanen. Nostalgic Maps: Wandering in a disappearing cityscape in “Mies, joka ei osannut sanoa ei [The Man Who Could Not Say No].”
An evocative analysis of a 1975 Finnish film that explores the tensions between urbanization and traditional communities in a fictional version of Helsinki.
-Daan Wesselman. Reconfiguring the Urban Body in Delillo’s “Cosmopolis.”
An exploration of the marginalization of the body in individuals engaging with the city in a 2003 fictional Manhattan.
This last chapter suggests a thread that does run through almost all of the chapters. Except for Ruth Meyer in Oxford, none of the authors seems to have any physical actual encounter with a city. The book might be better approached with the expectation of disembodiment rather than uncanniness.
Displaying 1 of 1 review