Seductive Aberrations: The Uncanny Affects in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Abstract:In this paper, I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula through affect theory and examine how certain uncanny encounters with the vampiric women in the novel can evoke the doubling of affective responses. In particular, I look at Jonathan Harker’s encounter with the sister-brides of Dracula and the different encounters with Lucy’s pre-vampiric/vampiric form to argue that what constitutes the intolerable in the novel can be considered as an uncanny affect and that its uncanny double is what constitutes tolerable in the novel. These uncanny affects, which are sometimes indistinguishable, arguably influence the many encounters with the feminine representations of the vampire in Dracula which I call seductive aberrations. These aberrations, through the entanglement of uncanny affects, muddle the very definition of the doubling of the tolerable/intolerable dichotomy when those are potentially indistinguishable. I posit here that notions of desire become affectively entangled when the notions of encounter become unhomely in nature. Moreover, I contend that what makes the uncanny affect unfamiliar is the inability to properly qualify bodily sensations.