Abstract

In my paper, I argue that experience, in the most general sense of the term, is sense formation taking place in the ontological framework of the threefold structure of ego, alter ego and world. I argue that there is no such thing as non-sense or, more exactly, non-sense necessarily implies sense too. As an example where the problem of sense vs non-sense is a crucial issue I analyze trauma and attempt to show that even there it is not non-sense but sense which has a traumatizing effect. The experience of the uncanny is in many respects similar to that of trauma. The type of uncanny that I am tackling consists of two moments: the familiar and the terrible, and the uncanny “effect” comes about as a result of their intermingling. I analyze the temporal nature of sense formation in the experience of the uncanny, with its retroactive and proactive moments. Finally, I analyze the self-reflexive type of the uncanny, arguing that there is an experience that I would call that of the meta-uncanny which consists in the very fact that what at first seems evidently and unambiguously terrible might always turn out to be ambiguous and possibly not terrible.