Theory of the Gimmick

Theory of the Gimmick
Author :
Publisher : Belknap Press
Total Pages : 417
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674984547
ISBN-13 : 0674984544
Rating : 4/5 (544 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Theory of the Gimmick by : Sianne Ngai

Download or read book Theory of the Gimmick written by Sianne Ngai and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian Gauss Award Shortlist Winner of the ASAP Book Prize A Literary Hub Book of the Year “Makes the case that the gimmick...is of tremendous critical value...Lies somewhere between critical theory and Sontag’s best work.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Ngai exposes capitalism’s tricks in her mind-blowing study of the time- and labor-saving devices we call gimmicks.” —New Statesman “One of the most creative humanities scholars working today...My god, it’s so good.” —Literary Hub “Ngai is a keen analyst of overlooked or denigrated categories in art and life...Highly original.” —4Columns “It is undeniable that part of what makes Ngai’s analyses of aesthetic categories so appealing...is simply her capacity to speak about them brilliantly.” —Bookforum “A page turner.” —American Literary History Deeply objectionable and yet strangely attractive, the gimmick comes in many guises: a musical hook, a financial strategy, a striptease, a novel of ideas. Above all, acclaimed theorist Sianne Ngai argues, the gimmick strikes us both as working too little (a labor-saving trick) and working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention). When we call something a gimmick, we register misgivings that suggest broader anxieties about value, money, and time, making the gimmick a hallmark of capitalism. With wit and critical precision, Ngai explores the extravagantly impoverished gimmick across a range of examples: the fiction of Thomas Mann, Helen DeWitt, and Henry James; the video art of Stan Douglas; the theoretical writings of Stanley Cavell and Theodor Adorno. Despite its status as cheap and compromised, the gimmick emerges as a surprisingly powerful tool in this formidable contribution to aesthetic theory.

Theory of the Gimmick Related Books

Theory of the Gimmick
Language: en
Pages: 417
Authors: Sianne Ngai
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-06-16 - Publisher: Belknap Press

GET EBOOK

Christian Gauss Award Shortlist Winner of the ASAP Book Prize A Literary Hub Book of the Year “Makes the case that the gimmick...is of tremendous critical val
Ugly Feelings
Language: en
Pages: 433
Authors: Sianne Ngai
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-07-01 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

GET EBOOK

Envy, irritation, paranoia—in contrast to powerful and dynamic negative emotions like anger, these non-cathartic states of feeling are associated with situati
Our Aesthetic Categories
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Sianne Ngai
Categories: Aesthetics, Modern
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture, dominating the look of its art and commodities as well as our ways of speaking about the am
The Topological Imagination
Language: en
Pages: 327
Authors: Angus Fletcher
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-04-04 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

GET EBOOK

Boldly original and boundary defining, The Topological Imagination clears a space for an intellectual encounter with the shape of human imagining. Joining two c
Benjamin's -abilities
Language: en
Pages: 374
Authors: Samuel Weber
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-08-10 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

GET EBOOK

“There is no world of thought that is not a world of language,” Walter Benjamin remarked, “and one only sees in the world what is preconditioned by langua