The Uncanny and the ‘Great Return’ from Exile: Unheimlich (Un)homecomings in Milan Kundera’s Ignorance

Öz This paper analyses Milan Kundera’s novel Ignorance, which focuses on the return of two emigrés, Irena and Josef, to the Czech republic following the collapse of the Communist regime there. The novel is explored from the perspective of the uncanny, the unheimlich, literally the unhomely. The uncanniness of the experience of migration, for both the migrant and the host society, has been famously explored by critics such as Homi Bhabha and Julia Kristeva. However, arguably, not only the experience of migration but also that of homecoming can be uncanny. In this context, based on work by Boscaljon et al. (2016), this paper focuses on the uncanniness of Irena and Josef ’s return to their country of origin. For Boscaljon et al. homecoming following a long period abroad can be profoundly uncanny, in that the familiarity of home has become, to an extent, unfamiliar after years of absence; both the emigré and their home have changed in the meantime. Moreover, the return home can be uncanny in that the emigré may effectively be confronted with their own eerie doubles in the form of abjected past or alternative selves. In this context, Irena and Jozef find a profoundly changed Prague on their return, and their reencounter with their families and old friends, with their language, and even with their own past selves is arguably one of an uncanny (un)familiarity.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

uncanny, unhomely, emigration, return, abject

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