The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act

by Fredric Jameson

The unnatural neutrality of this vacant cityscape may stand as an emblem of the contemporary fantastic in general, its expectant hush revealing an object world forever suspended on the brink of meaning, forever disposed to receive a revelation of evil or of grace that never comes. The unpeopled streets, the oppressive silence, convey this absent presence like a word on the tip of your tongue or a dream not quite remembered, while for the subject himself, a succession of trivial and apparently insignificant feelings (the seltsamerweise that nags at Andreas’ attention, the sudden bursts of inexplicable humor—“Andreas war ärgerlich”) records the internal activity of a psyche buffeted by forebodings, and confirms Heidegger’s account of Stimmung as the privileged medium through which the worldness of world manifests itself.

The absence is abject/mystical/absurd/uncommon