Introduction to the Self

People have always imagined and produced multitudes of weird, eerie, and unrealistic images that often puzzle us and shatter our sensibilities. The Mesopotamian eagle with a lion's head, Assyrian winged bulls with men's heads and magnificent beards, the Islamic Buraq with the body of a winged horse and tail of a peacock with the head of a woman, or the Egyptian Sphinx with the body of a lion, head of a woman, and wings of an eagle. These are just some of the many unsettling creatures from ancient cultures, not to mention countless myths that shake us: godly dismemberment in ancient Egypt, mutilation in Norse tales of Odin, or the famous Greek Oedipus marrying his mother and killing his father.

Nor are these just ancient tales to scare children. Eerie images and strange stories continue to fascinate and strangely arrest our attention today. The Medusa Gorgon with venomous snakes as her hair, featured in Clash of the Titans and many other movies, in God of War and numerous more videogames, and in even one of today's most popular tattoos, is a vivid example of the enduring significance of an uneasy symbol that originates in the mists of Greek mythology (discussed in Chapter 4). Contemporary horror movies, as well as cyborgs and aliens in science fiction play similar roles as the strange rites and images of ancient religions. They raise hackles, give goose bumps, and move us to the edges of our seats with images that are ghostly familiar yet strangely out of place.

Why do these images and stories unsettle us? If they are just weird or out of place, why do they repeat throughout history and across cultures? In this chapter, we argue that (1) much of this imagery, particularly from ancient cultures, should be seen as uncanny, not as terrifying and (2) the uncanny is symbolic, so that it may be analyzed using the framework of deep culture. Indeed, just as with any symbol that recurs in ancient or modern popular cultures, the uncanny is irreplaceable and its purpose can only be indicated by that symbol and no other. We point out that one such function of the symbolic uncanny is to move us out of “normal” place and our “ordinary” selves to the extent that we are no longer familiar to ourselves. It is a displacing symbol.