Compelling thesis that horror's uniqueness isn't cultural accident but structural consequence of Enlightenment rationalism. The progression from external monsters to internal fragmentation tracks perfectly, but one overlooked tension: mannequins vs ventriloquist dummies isnt just southern serenity vs northern grotesque, it's also passive objecthood vs animated agency. The mannequin's horror emerges from its inertness becoming mobile (shop window dummy that moved), while the dummy's uncanny power comes from borrowed voice creating doubled consciousness. Both threaten the bounded self differently, one through invasion from outside, the other through ventriloquized splittin from within.
Outstanding scholarship here. The connection between modernity's face-multiplication (photography, cinema, masks) and psychoanalytic internalisation opens up somthing profound about why Western horror feels so distinctivly psychological. It's fascinating how the mannequin/dummy distinction maps onto southern serenity versus northern grotesque, almost like two competing responses tothe same underlying crisis of selfhood.
I suspect, following the geologist's always dependable doctrine of uniformitarianism and applying it to humans, that this sort of thing has been roiling in humanity for far, far longer than when it became salient and fashionable in Western arts. literature, and sciences. After all, there is (scientific!) evidence that the largest part of the cerebral cortex, the neocortex, largely functions as a repressor/moderator of our older, 'darker' limbic system. This 'repression' is reportedly what mechanistically keeps the beasts of impulse and instinct somewhat at bay and fosters some degree of cooperation and sociability among individual humans. See "evolution" section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocortex
Have you seen the work of Ashley Bickerton? He's from an English family (father a linguist) who was born in Barbados and grew up all over the non-western world. Curiously, his images of faces became super-charged with a kind of grotesque beauty at, to me, a new level, using Photoshop plus paint. [New technology also contributes to self-awareness as to what is human and how do we represent this.] He died a few years ago in Bali.
"Put simply, the West invented horror because the West underwent a singularly unique transformation, a total revolution in human life, which involved discovering or creating previously unknown psychological depths."
Right, we spent the last few hundred years expanding time and space, from fertile primeval ooze to quasars, and finding new vistas of instinct, threat, death. We didn't come from a golden age, rather we extended primitive brutality - your speciality - back tens of thousands of years. We threw away our divine human origin, and salvation, to become offspring of the apes. Science reveals more terror and physical vulnerability even as the transhumanists promise total invulnerability. And now the imminent horror is the subdermal microchip, the boundary-obliterating hive mind, humans reduced to ventriloquist dolls.
Been thinking your average online critical thinking skeptic, who liberally sloshes logical fallacies here and there, is motivated to shrill denunciation of primitive and superstitious thinking by this horror. Or this horror, this horror to misquote Conrad.
Very enjoyable read! You have one little slip when you wrote “The Sorrows of Young Goethe” when you certainly mean “Young Werther”
Great piece.
"Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own."
Great read.
Great writing and research, thanks! I think of it as our Likeness mourning and trying to capture our lost image!
Brilliant 🙏
Compelling thesis that horror's uniqueness isn't cultural accident but structural consequence of Enlightenment rationalism. The progression from external monsters to internal fragmentation tracks perfectly, but one overlooked tension: mannequins vs ventriloquist dummies isnt just southern serenity vs northern grotesque, it's also passive objecthood vs animated agency. The mannequin's horror emerges from its inertness becoming mobile (shop window dummy that moved), while the dummy's uncanny power comes from borrowed voice creating doubled consciousness. Both threaten the bounded self differently, one through invasion from outside, the other through ventriloquized splittin from within.
Amazing. Related to Charles Taylor's idea of the "buffered self" ?
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/fantasy-and-the-buffered-self
https://archive.nytimes.com/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/religious-experience-and-the-modern-self/
Outstanding scholarship here. The connection between modernity's face-multiplication (photography, cinema, masks) and psychoanalytic internalisation opens up somthing profound about why Western horror feels so distinctivly psychological. It's fascinating how the mannequin/dummy distinction maps onto southern serenity versus northern grotesque, almost like two competing responses tothe same underlying crisis of selfhood.
I suspect, following the geologist's always dependable doctrine of uniformitarianism and applying it to humans, that this sort of thing has been roiling in humanity for far, far longer than when it became salient and fashionable in Western arts. literature, and sciences. After all, there is (scientific!) evidence that the largest part of the cerebral cortex, the neocortex, largely functions as a repressor/moderator of our older, 'darker' limbic system. This 'repression' is reportedly what mechanistically keeps the beasts of impulse and instinct somewhat at bay and fosters some degree of cooperation and sociability among individual humans. See "evolution" section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocortex
As usual, very interesting and observant. Thanks.
Have you seen the work of Ashley Bickerton? He's from an English family (father a linguist) who was born in Barbados and grew up all over the non-western world. Curiously, his images of faces became super-charged with a kind of grotesque beauty at, to me, a new level, using Photoshop plus paint. [New technology also contributes to self-awareness as to what is human and how do we represent this.] He died a few years ago in Bali.
A pretty good background article with photos: https://www.tatlerasia.com/lifestyle/arts/trouble-in-paradise-the-dramatic-story-behind-artist-ashley-bickerton-s-tropical-hideaway
"Put simply, the West invented horror because the West underwent a singularly unique transformation, a total revolution in human life, which involved discovering or creating previously unknown psychological depths."
Right, we spent the last few hundred years expanding time and space, from fertile primeval ooze to quasars, and finding new vistas of instinct, threat, death. We didn't come from a golden age, rather we extended primitive brutality - your speciality - back tens of thousands of years. We threw away our divine human origin, and salvation, to become offspring of the apes. Science reveals more terror and physical vulnerability even as the transhumanists promise total invulnerability. And now the imminent horror is the subdermal microchip, the boundary-obliterating hive mind, humans reduced to ventriloquist dolls.
Been thinking your average online critical thinking skeptic, who liberally sloshes logical fallacies here and there, is motivated to shrill denunciation of primitive and superstitious thinking by this horror. Or this horror, this horror to misquote Conrad.