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Ugly Feelings
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Ugly Feelings
$6199
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This insightful and scholarly examination appeals especially to readers interested in literary studies, cultural and media studies, feminist theory, aesthetic theory, and anyone curious about the political and cultural roles of emotions in modern art and society.
Ngai mobilizes the aesthetics of unprestigious negative affects such as irritation, envy, and disgust to investigate not only ideological and representational dilemmas in literature—with a particular focus on those inflected by gender and race—but also blind spots in contemporary literary and cultural criticism.
Ugly Feelings tries to be many things in every chapter: a rhetorical reading of a set of 'marginal' avant-garde or popular texts, a deconstructive critique of 'blind spots and antimonies' in the way contemporary theory has approached a given problematic, and an articulation of a 'cultural predicament,' all through an exemplification of an affective quality that most commentators usually shy away from because of its 'minor' tone and 'negative' force. This is a most ambitious agenda--and one that Ngai succeeds admirably in carrying out. The analyses are beautifully crafted, complex without being convoluted, each judiciously drawing upon an appropriate subset of an impressive range of theoretical resources and cultural references. Although the book presents itself primarily as a contribution to literary and media studies, its impact will extend much further. In addition to developing highly original readings of its chosen texts, it reexamines pivotal political-cultural issues, concerned in particular with representations of gender and race, through a new revitalizing affective lens. In the uniqueness of the approach, familiar debates take on new life. The sustained engagement with affect and emotion, coupled with deconstructive technique, gives the book a certain unity across the differences in subject matter and the cultural-theoretical issues tackled by each chapter. -- Brian Massumi, author of Parables for the Virtual
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Description
Envy, irritation, paranoia—in contrast to powerful and dynamic negative emotions like anger, these non-cathartic states of feeling are associated with situations in which action is blocked or suspended. In her examination of the cultural forms to which these affects give rise, Sianne Ngai suggests that these minor and more politically ambiguous feelings become all the more suited for diagnosing the character of late modernity.
Along with her inquiry into the aesthetics of unprestigious negative affects such as irritation, envy, and disgust, Ngai examines a racialized affect called animatedness, and a paradoxical synthesis of shock and boredom called stuplimity. She explores the politically equivocal work of these affective concepts in the cultural contexts where they seem most at stake, from academic feminist debates to the Harlem Renaissance, from late-twentieth-century American poetry to Hollywood film and network television.
Through readings of Herman Melville, Nella Larsen, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Hitchcock, Gertrude Stein, Ralph Ellison, John Yau, and Bruce Andrews, among others, Ngai shows how art turns to ugly feelings as a site for interrogating its own suspended agency in the affirmative culture of a market society, where art is tolerated as essentially unthreatening.
Ngai mobilizes the aesthetics of ugly feelings to investigate not only ideological and representational dilemmas in literature—with a particular focus on those inflected by gender and race—but also blind spots in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. Her work maps a major intersection of literary studies, media and cultural studies, feminist studies, and aesthetic theory.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Critically acclaimed for its originality and depth, Ugly Feelings is praised as a groundbreaking work by scholars such as David Trotter of the London Review of Books and Benjamin Lytal of the New York Sun. Charles Altieri from Contemporary Literature highlights Ngai's exceptional erudition, inventive argumentation, and clear prose, describing the book as stunning and thought-provoking. The text is widely recognised for its sweeping yet precise analysis of the aesthetics of negative emotions.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780674024090
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 01 March 2007
Country: United States
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Illustration: 36 halftones
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 24.0mm
Width: 140.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 432
Collections
About the Author
Sianne Ngai is Professor of English at Stanford University.
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