Night and the Uncanny

The night is a double of the day, a comment on its activities, a countersite. In most cultures, the setting of the sun has always been connected with the advent of a different way of thinking and behaving. As our sight diminishes, other senses — notably our faculties of hearing and of the imagination — come to be increased. Our sense of distance and measure changes, the contours of the persons or objects we meet become blurred, we encounter a sense of disorientation, which can be either fascinating or threatening. In contrast to its appearance in daylight, the world surrounding us is harder to characterize; it shifts between the familiar and the unfamiliar. The danger potentially lurking in the night has, furthermore, always inspired tales of superstitious powers beyond those ruled by diurnal reason. Apart from thieves, arsonists and conspirators, ghosts, vampires and the devil himself seek the protection of darkness to pursue their unholy goals. At the same time, precisely because the night requires a higher degree of vigilance than the day, its darkness affords revelations. The night is the right time for the divine visions of early Christian mystics, for encountering the spirits of one’s departed loved ones, for telling ghost stories around a fire or for seeing in one’s dreams things one’s conscious mind would censor during the day. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Mysticism · Sight · Theology · Uncanny · Vision · Impact of Light on Environment and Health · Night-time city culture · Philosophy