Sianne Ngai: Ugly Feelings (2005)

“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.”

Publisher Harvard University Press, 2005
ISBN 0674015363, 9780674015364
viii+422 pages

Reviews: Jennifer L. Fleissner (Modernism/modernity, 2006), Jennifer Greiman (Leviathan, 2012), Eu Jin Chua (Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature, 2007), Dina Mendonça (Metapsychology, 2005).

Interview with author (Adam Jasper, Cabinet)
Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2018-5-23)

John F. Moffitt: Alchemist of the Avante-Garde: The Case of Marcel Duchamp (2003)

“A fascinating book demonstrating the influence of alchemy and esoteric traditions on the mature art of Marcel Duchamp.

Acknowledged as the “Artist of the Century,” Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) left a legacy that dominates the art world to this day. Inventing the ironically dégagé attitude of “ready-made” art-making, Duchamp heralded the postmodern era and replaced Pablo Picasso as the role model for avant-garde artists. John F. Moffitt challenges commonly accepted interpretations of Duchamp’s art and persona by showing that his mature art, after 1910, is largely drawn from the influence of the occult traditions. Moffitt demonstrates that the key to understanding the cryptic meaning of Duchamp’s diverse artworks and writings is alchemy, the most pictorial of all the occult philosophies and sciences.”

Publisher SUNY Press, 2003
Suny Series in Western Esoteric Traditions
ISBN 0791457095, 9780791457092
468 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2021-5-16)

Katherine S. Dreier, James Johnson Sweeney, Naum Gabo: Three Lectures on Modern Art (1949)

“These lectures by three brilliant leaders in Modern Art were delivered at Yale University under the auspices of the Thomas Rutherford Trowbridge Art Lecture Foundation.

These three lectures deal with the founding of the Société Anonyme; Museum of Modern Art; 1920, which was organized by Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray to bring clarity and understanding to the confusion which the many new forms of expression in art brought over by the Armory Exhibition in 1913 had caused.”

The lectures include “Intrinsic Significance” in Modern Art by Katherine S. Dreier. Modern Art and Tradition by James Johnson Sweeney, and A Retrospective View of Constructive Art by Naum Gabo.

Foreword by Dean Charles Sawyer
Publisher The Philosophical Library, 1949
91 pages

PDF
Internet Archive (multiple formats)