Haunting Home: The uncanny as theory and praxis in autotheory

Abstract

Homebound documents my growing awareness of the expectations towards women at home, becoming attuned to the politics of spatial occupancy, domestic labor, and gendered habits. Crucial to my project is Freud’s concept of the Uncanny. This concept recognizes home as the realm of safety and comfort, and at the same time, a site of hidden danger and fear. This paradox highlights instability, tension, and unease, which are reflected in my project’s theme and structure as I tackle home-based, gendered traumas. In terms of form, my creative output interweaves memoir, found poetry, and literary criticism. Using hybridity and intertextuality, I demonstrate a way to manage the agency and responsibility that textual mediation offers, confronting the unease of meaning’s instability and the risk of falling into other forms of reductions. Ultimately, I engage in formal experimentation to celebrate writerly agency.