Ugly Feelings

Author: Sianne Ngai
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674041526
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book 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.

Ugly Feelings

Author: Sianne NGAI
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971345
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
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. Her work maps a major intersection of literary studies, media and cultural studies, feminist studies, and aesthetic theory.

Theory of the Gimmick

Author: Sianne Ngai
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674984544
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
A provocative theory of the gimmick as an aesthetic category steeped in the anxieties of capitalism. Repulsive and yet strangely attractive, the gimmick is a form that can be found virtually everywhere in capitalism. It 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 as working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention). Focusing on this connection to work, Ngai draws a line from gimmicks to political economy. When we call something a gimmick, we are registering uncertainties about value bound to labor and time—misgivings that indicate broader anxieties about the measurement of wealth in 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; photographs by Torbjørn Rødland; 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.

Ugly

Author: Robert Hoge
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425287769
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
A funny, moving, and true story of an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face that's perfect for fans of Wonder—now available in the U.S. When Robert Hoge was born, he had a tumor the size of a tennis ball in the middle of his face and short, twisted legs. Surgeons removed the tumor and made him a new nose from one of his toes. Amazingly, he survived—with a face that would never be the same. Strangers stared at him. Kids called him names, and adults could be cruel, too. Everybody seemed to agree that he was “ugly.” But Robert refused to let his face define him. He played pranks, got into trouble, had adventures with his big family, and finally found a sport that was perfect for him to play. And Robert came face to face with the biggest decision of his life, he followed his heart. This poignant memoir about overcoming bullying and thriving with disabilities shows that what makes us “ugly” also makes us who we are. It features a reflective foil cover and black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Feeling and Ugly

Author: Mupotsa, Danai
Publisher: Impepho Press
ISBN: 0639946518
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 86

Book Description
DANAI MUPOTSA was born in Harare, and has lived in Botswana, the United States and South Africa where she is now based. She describes herself as a teacher and writer. Feeling and Ugly was largely written between 2016 and 2018, although some of the poems were written earlier or previously published in some form. The collection gathers the various statuses and locations she moves across, as daughter, mother, teacher, scholar and writer. From these places, many of the poems try to approach difficult feelings about what it means to “do politics” from an empathetic complexity. “I’m raging, sometimes that makes me petty” is one such example. The collection carries a set of standpoints, or willfulness about pedagogy, politics and optimism. And while she carries an attachment to a non-reparative, or negative affect across the collection, she closes in describing the work, or all of her work, as love poems. This collection is a long love letter to those who are wilful.

Our Aesthetic Categories

Author: Sianne Ngai
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780674046580
Category : Aesthetics, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
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 ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Ngai offers an aesthetic theory for the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism.

Minor Feelings

Author: Cathy Park Hong
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782837248
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION 2021 A New York Times Top Book of 2020 Chosen as a Guardian Book of 2020 A BBC Culture Best Books of 2020 Nominated for Good Reads Books of 2020 One of Time's Must-Read Books of 2020 'Unputdownable ... Hong's razor-sharp, provocative prose will linger long after you put Minor Feelings down' - AnOther, Books You Should Read This Year 'A fearless work of creative non-fiction about racism in cultural pursuits by an award-winning poet and essayist' - Asia House 'Brilliant, penetrating and unforgettable, Minor Feelings is what was missing on our shelf of classics ... To read this book is to become more human' - Claudia Rankine author of Citizen 'Hong says the book was 'a dare to herself', and she makes good on it: by writing into the heart of her own discomfort, she emerges with a reckoning destined to be a classic' - Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts What happens when an immigrant believes the lies they're told about their own racial identity? For Cathy Park Hong, they experience the shame and difficulty of "minor feelings". The daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up in America steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality. With sly humour and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche - and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth.

Big Feelings (An All Are Welcome Book)

Author: Alexandra Penfold
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0525579745
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41

Book Description
The newest picture book from the creators of All Are Welcome to help children navigate BIG FEELINGS! In their bestselling picture book All Are Welcome, Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman celebrate kindness, inclusivity, and diversity. Now with Big Feelings, they help children navigate the emotional challenges they face in their daily lives. What should we do when things don't go to plan? We may feel mad, frustrated, or overwhelmed, but by talking it through, compromising, and seeing another point of view, we can start fresh, begin anew.

Those Ugly Emotions

Author: Ken Campbell
Publisher: Christian Focus Publications
ISBN: 9781857922448
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Essentially you can be viewed in three different ways. The person you think you are, the person other people think you are and the person God knows you to be. So the first place we should go to in order to understand how to manage our emotions, is God's word. Because only God really knows who we are Our real life has those uncontrolled times that we don't want others to know about, the times when we really dislike ourselves, those moments we even try to hide from God. Ken Campbell shows us where those 'ugly' emotions inside us come from and how to deal with them. This book is not lukewarm psychology dressed up as Christianity but a biblical way of dealing with our darker side. It is wonderfully practical but yet deeply spiritual and helps us get to grips with the thoughts, attitudes and behaviour that can drag us down.

The Immortality of the Soul

Author: William (of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 92

Book Description