2024/07/22 by Richard Stopford · 1 voice
Psychology · #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
paper · doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayad046
openalex publication_date 2024/07/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Abstract In this paper, I analyse the phenomenon of eeriness as a kind of strange aesthetic experience. Beginning with Fisher’s insight (The Weird and the Eerie, 2017) that we can distinguish weirdness and eeriness from uncanniness, I offer an original account of eeriness. I argue that eeriness is the appearance of an underdetermination in the spatio-temporal location of objects of experience, relative to experiencing agent; this underdetermination results in a destabilisation of the “horizon of object-ivity” within which we make sense of the objects of appearance. This has the existential consequence of destabilising the subject’s sense of being-in-the world. I ground the analysis in examples from both fictional and non-fictional contexts to indicate the generality of the analysis.