The Undead Among Us - The Figure of the Vampire as the "Unknown Other" and Its Representation in "True Blood"

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Chapter 2,: The Unknown Other Fright and Fascination of the Monster:
2.1: The Other, the Self, and the Uncanny
Dealing with the other of both individuals and groups, as well as the contact with foreign environments and the imagination of the other, have been examined by many academics in various fields such as philosophy, sociology, political science, theology, and anthropology (cf. Janz 7). Also psychoanalysis, linguistics, and cultural studies attempt to define where the notion of the other descends from, what it expresses, and why it is both shocking and fascinating. The idea of the unknown other was first philosophically examined by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In his work The Science of Logic (1812/1813) Hegel outlines that the entity is always something opposing; something or someone can only be conceived if it is distinguishable from the other (cf. Hegel 98).
The term of the so called other can describe many different phenomena. In English there are several words describing what in German is expressed by the single word fremd : foreign, strange, different, extrinsical, other, alien. All these adjectives signify what this book refers to as the unknown other . According to The Oxford Advanced Learner s Dictionary (1995), other always goes along with something or someone different or remaining in a group. That definition already implies that the other is closely connected to the self. In order to be able to identify what is other, it is necessary to define the self. Being aware of their own identity and characteristics, individuals are able to distinguish and isolate themselves from others. Vice versa, they are able to identify themselves by being aware of what they are not. Thus, the concept of the other has been used in social science to examine groups and societies dealings with others , particular in terms of exclusions, such as defining who does not fit into their society. Furthermore, the other is integral to comprehending and

Felicitas Schott, M.A., studied English and American Studies at the University of Technology Chemnitz and at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. During her stay in Canada, she started studying the subject of identity search and its definition by the differentiation of the self and the other. She examined these notions academically in her Bachelor s Thesis Fictional Representation of Italian American Immigrants Search for Identity in 'The Sopranos' . This work inspired her to a more intensive study of the concepts of the other and the unknown, as well as of the fascination of the reader and viewer with the horror genre and its fictional figures.