This article explores the development of the concept of the uncanny during the Enlightenment, as well as its appearance in modern gothic literature and the work of Sigmund Freud in the twentieth century. This study argues that the uncanny is a historically situated concept whose use as a structuring mechanism, both in gothic fiction and psychoanalytic discourse, reveals a mode of representation that allows for a critical approach to the epistemic framework and subject effects mobilized by Enlightenment thought.