The uncanny as energetic state: towards a thermoliterary analysis theory

Abstract

Throughout the last decades, as the knowledge evolves and breaks through different disciplines, several proposals have incorporated a thermodynamic perspective to economic, social and anthropological analysis. However, we find very few theoretical applications to the analysis of arts, and there is a complete absence of exegetical proposals coming from a perspective merged with the so-called ‘natural’ science. In this paper, I will present an approach to a theoretical proposal where chemical thermodynamic tools are redefined to be used in philological hermeneutics. In this specific case, in the meaning and qualitative and semiquantitative parametrization of "uncanny" literature.

In the first section of this paper, a basic thermodynamic analysis theory for basic emotions and literary genres will be described, taking as starting point theoretical studies suggesting that human behaviour could be assimilated to natural science’s models. In the second section, a thermodynamic analysis of "uncanny states" will be performed, defining and interpreting their limits and composition according to a couple of classic studies on this matter: The Uncanny by S. Freud, and Lo bello y lo siniestro, by E. Trías.