Uncanny Creatures: Doll Thinking in Modern German Culture (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany) - Softcover

Christophe Koné (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472039733 ISBN 13: 9780472039739

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2024

Synopsis

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 Koné 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, Koné 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 Mörike 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.

About this title

About the Author

Christophe Koné is Associate Professor of German at Williams College and Director of the Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472039733
• ISBN 13: 9780472039739
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168