Influence and Nostalgia

Similar to what Ioana touched on, I found Freud's distinction between the repressed and surmounted uncanny experiences interesting. Since he mentions how these experiences can harken back both to both personal complexes of infancy as well as primitive (so to speak) concepts, I wondered how that contributed to the idea that sexuality is predominantly a social construct. He says that the infantile and primitive aspects are connected, and perhaps overlap ("Uncanny" 157), but can they do this easily if they represent different forces on sexuality and the unconscious? Do they even work as different forces, though, or are they cut from the same cloth?

And on a different matter: if pleasure is a function of repetition, as Professor Doane mentioned, then does that agree with Levi-Strauss's idea that we have a desire for the nostalgia of a time when language had value? Would this imply that there is something inherently inferior about post-pubescent sexuality?