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Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting by Sianne Ngai (Hardback, 2012)

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The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture. They dominate the look of its art and commodities as well as our discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of the aesthetic categories that most people use to process the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism, treating them with the same seriousness philosophers have reserved for analysis of the beautiful and the sublime. Ngai explores how each of these aesthetic categories expresses conflicting feelings that connect to the ways in which postmodern subjects work, exchange, and consume. As a style of performing that takes the form of affective labor, the zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and our sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to the circulation of discourse and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute's involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At the deepest level, Ngai argues, these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities. Through readings of Ador, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts ranging from Bob Perelman's poetry to Ed Ruscha's photography books to the situation comedy of Lucille Ball, Ngai shows how these everyday aesthetic categories also provide traction to classic problems in aesthetic theory. The zany, cute, and interesting are t postmodernity's only meaningful aesthetic categories, Ngai argues, but the ones best suited for grasping the radical transformation of aesthetic experience and discourse under its conditions.

Product Identifiers

Publisher
Harvard University Press
ISBN-10
0674046587
ISBN-13
9780674046580
eBay Product ID (ePID)
117460382

Product Key Features

Author
Sianne Ngai
Format
Sewn,Cloth over Boards,With Printed Dust Jacket, Hardback
Language
English
Subject
Philosophy
Type
Textbook

Dimensions

Weight
680g
Height
235mm
Width
155mm

Additional Product Features

Place of Publication
Cambridge, Mass
Spine
28mm
Content Note
44 Halftones, 4 Line Illustrations
Author Biography
Sianne Ngai Is Professor of English at Stanford University.
Out-Of-Print Date
03/10/2016
Date of Publication
23/10/2012
Country of Publication
United States
Genre
Philosophy

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Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting by Sianne Ngai (Hardback, 2012)

About this product

Product Information

Product Identifiers

Product Key Features

Dimensions

Additional Product Features

Best Selling in Adult Learning & University

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