Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Four Corners of the Unsettling
T2 - The more-than-uncanniness of consumer culture
AU - Cronin, James
AU - James, Sophie
PY - 2024/11/30
Y1 - 2024/11/30
N2 - Although consumer culture has been studied extensively for its propagation of comforting signs, symbols, and experiences that reassure us of our selves and other marketable fictions, it is also conducive to unsettling effects and affects, many of which are unintended, undesired, and unavailable for introspection. Departing from Freud’s theory of the uncanny and borrowing from commentariesby cultural critics Mark Fisher and Adam Kotsko, we diagnose the unsettling’s relationship with four affective-experiential categories which contribute to its hybrid makeup: the weird, the eerie, the creepy, and the awkward. Drawing upon a phenomenological rubric of presence–absence, we characterise the weird as competing copresences which disturb the borders between things; the eerie asabsence of the expected or presence of the unexpected; the creepy as excess presence; and the awkward as excess absence. These “four corners of the unsettling” provide an alternative perspective on the discomforting character of consumer culture.
AB - Although consumer culture has been studied extensively for its propagation of comforting signs, symbols, and experiences that reassure us of our selves and other marketable fictions, it is also conducive to unsettling effects and affects, many of which are unintended, undesired, and unavailable for introspection. Departing from Freud’s theory of the uncanny and borrowing from commentariesby cultural critics Mark Fisher and Adam Kotsko, we diagnose the unsettling’s relationship with four affective-experiential categories which contribute to its hybrid makeup: the weird, the eerie, the creepy, and the awkward. Drawing upon a phenomenological rubric of presence–absence, we characterise the weird as competing copresences which disturb the borders between things; the eerie asabsence of the expected or presence of the unexpected; the creepy as excess presence; and the awkward as excess absence. These “four corners of the unsettling” provide an alternative perspective on the discomforting character of consumer culture.
KW - Uncanny
KW - experiential consumption
KW - function
KW - structure
KW - terminal marketing
U2 - 10.1080/10253866.2024.2345063
DO - 10.1080/10253866.2024.2345063
M3 - Journal article
VL - 27
SP - 251
EP - 268
JO - Consumption, Markets and Culture
JF - Consumption, Markets and Culture
SN - 1025-3866
IS - 3
ER -