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Melancholy is both the refusal of grief and the incorporation of loss, a miming of the death it cannot mourn. (Butler, 1997, p. 142)
Many people experience the [uncanny] feeling in the highest degree in relation to death and dead bodies, to the return of the dead, and to spirits and ghosts. As we have seen, some languages in use today can only render the German expression “an unheimlich house” by “a haunted house.” (Freud, 1919, p. 364)
Psychoanalytic theory has played a crucial role in undermining the belief that we can ever be in full possession of our selves. In this context, we gain a different perspective on the question of what it might mean to dwell in the world today. In other words, what does it mean for one to be “at home”? Is it possible to find a secure residence for the one? In this context, Judith Butler (1993) has pointed out that “sex” is a key regulatory norm by which “one” becomes viable at all (p. 2). The normative positions of “male” and “female,” of “masculine” and “feminine,” provide the framework within which one achieves cultural intelligibility. In this sense, it might be said that sex and gender categories attempt to provide a home within which one can be—that is, they house the one, they provide a shelter from which to attempt the construction of an identity. But can one ever be at home within such an abode? Or is it perhaps the case that gendered identities are the equivalent of haunted houses—melancholic structures inhabited by the lost other? If gender does indeed exhibit such a