| Description |
1 online resource (1 audio file (12hr., 51 min.)) : digital. |
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digital digital recording rda |
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data file rda |
| Access |
Digital content provided by hoopla. |
| Cast |
Read by Nancy Wu. |
| Summary |
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. |
| System Details |
Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
| Subject |
Aesthetics, Modern -- 20th century.
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Aesthetics, Modern -- 21st century.
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Aesthetics, Modern -- Philosophy.
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Hoaxes.
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Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
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Capitalism.
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| Added Author |
Wu, Nancy.
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hoopla digital.
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| ISBN |
9781666133233 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
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166613323X (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
| Music No. |
MWT14269686 |
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