Uncanny creatures : doll thinking in modern German culture / Christophe Koné.

Uncanny creatures : doll thinking in modern German culture / Christophe Koné.

9780472220830 electronic book
0472220837 electronic book
9780472133291 hardcover
9780472039739 paperback
0472133292

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2024.

© 2024

English

1 online resource (xii, 171 pages) : illustrations (some color).

10.3998/mpub.12265924 doi

GV1219 .K736 2024

745.592/210943

Germany held a monopoly on the manufacture and export of bisque toy dolls in Europe before WWI. Yet, dolls' omnipresence in the material, visual, and literary culture of the modern German-speaking world has so far not been properly addressed. In demonstrating this cultural affinity for dolls, Christophe Kone draws upon a range of stories and seminal essays on dolls, as well as toys, sculptures, paintings, and photographs. He examines how E.T.A. Hoffmann's romantic tale The Sandman (1815) has been a major source of inspiration for German-speaking doll makers because of how it centers imagination and inventiveness. Using Hoffmann's tale as an early example of an amalgam between doll thinking and making in German culture, Kone shows how it initiated a genealogy of doll thinkers (Freud & Jentsch), writers (Rilke), painters (Kokoschka), photographers (Bellmer), and makers (Pritzel). Uncanny Creatures then explores how this unusual interest in human-like figures continues a long tradition of thought devoted to conceptualizing "things," from Immanuel Kant's theory of the thing-in-itself to Martin Heidegger's lecture on the thing, and Eduard MoI rike or Rainer Maria Rilke's thing-poems. Because dolls occupy a liminal space-not quite things and more than mere objects-they appear as uncanny creatures which have held a fascination for writers, thinkers, and artists alike. Uncanny Creatures moves past the Freudian discourse of fetishism to propose a new reading of doll artifacts in German culture centered on their ability to evoke a feeling of uncertainty and unsettlement in the viewer.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Access limited to authorized users.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on June 11, 2024).

Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany.

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