I mötet med apan : Det kusliga i Sara Stridsbergs roman Darling River

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how the uncanny is represented in Sara Stridsberg’s novel Darling Riverthrough the relationship between the scientist and the ape. Through a close hermeneuticreading, the study analyses how the novel explores boundaries between human and animal,subject and object, and how these boundaries become increasingly unstable throughout thenarrative.The analysis draws primarily on Sigmund Freud’s theory of the uncanny,supplemented by Nicholas Royle’s and Anneleen Masschelein’s discussions ofepistemological uncertainty, as well as theoretical perspectives on power, abjection andhuman–animal relations.The study demonstrates that the uncanny in Darling River emerges not throughencounters with something entirely foreign, but through the unsettling return of what appearsboth familiar and strange. As the scientist attempts to observe, discipline and categorize theape, the distinction between human and animal becomes increasingly uncertain. At the sametime, his position as rational and autonomous subject is gradually destabilized.The thesis argues that Darling River portrays the uncanny as an experience ofepistemological uncertainty in which established categories of identity, humanity andsubjectivity can no longer be maintained as stable or self–evident. By doing so, the studydemonstrates how the uncanny functions as an overarching structure that connects questionsof power, desire and animality in the novel.