The Spectral Everyday: Introspecting Uncanniness in Short Stories of Satyajit Ray

Abstract

In this paper, I explore two aspects of the Freudian uncanny in Satyajit Ray’s stories, namely, the mirror and the double and how the everyday spectres which these produce have a real presence. The appearance of spectres in these texts notifies us that what’s been concealed is very much alive and present, interfering precisely with those always incomplete forms of containment and repression ceaselessly directed towards us. So, in an everyday otherwise besotted by hysterical blindness to apparitions, the reading of Ray’s narratives interlaced with that affect of uncanny, I argue, will give us a chance to reflect on everyday ghosts.