Sianne Ngai

Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting

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ISBN 13:
9780674088122
author:
Sianne Ngai
format:
Paperback
publisher:
Harvard University Press
language:
English
Publication Year:
2015
Pages:
344
Dimensions:
22.6 x 14.5 x 2.3 cm
Genre:
Poetry, Drama & Criticism, History & Criticism, Literary Theory & Movements
Condition:
New
Availability:
Item usually sent within 10 working days
£20.00

Description

The zany, the cute, and the interesting are ubiquitous in postmodern culture. They dominate our art, commodities, and discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects evoke. In this study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of aesthetic categories that process the hypercommodified world of late capitalism with seriousness reserved for analysis of beauty and the sublime. Ngai explores how each category expresses conflicting feelings that connect to postmodern subjects' ways of working, exchanging, and consuming. The zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to discourse circulation and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute's involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At its core, Ngai argues that these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities. Through readings of Adorno, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts, Ngai shows how everyday aesthetic categories provide traction for classic problems in aesthetic theory.

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