ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud is interested, in particular, in the "uncanny," or "the realm of the frightening, of what evokes fear and dread". Uncomfortable intrusions of the past into the present prompt Freud to write The Uncanny. The uncanny is that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar. The link with repression now illuminates Schelling's definition of the uncanny as "something that should have remained hidden and has come into the open." Freud identifies a number of occasions that may invite uncanny sensations, but one that is particularly important for readers has to do with fictional narratives. As a result, the West experiences the uncanny when the colonized unexpectedly make their presence known. For the uncanny element is actually nothing new or strange, but something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed.
