* Introduction *1. Tone *2. Animatedness *3. Envy *4. Irritation *5. Anxiety *6. Stuplimity *7. Paranoia * Afterword: On Disgust * Notes * Index
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
Sianne Ngai is Professor of English at Stanford University.
Strikingly original… A sweeping yet fine-grained analysis of the
aesthetics of negative emotions such as envy, anxiety, irritation
and paranoia.
*London Review of Books*
The book’s worth lies in its ambition, even its overreach. This is
no cultural-studies grab-bag: Ms. Ngai really is breaking new
ground.
*New York Sun*
Wow! That is almost all that I have to say about Sianne Ngai’s Ugly
Feelings. This is an amazing book, stunning in its depth and range,
exemplary in its learning, and almost continually surprising in its
inventiveness. Ngai seems to have read and seen almost every text
and movie, and not just read and seen but imagined or reimagined
them with dazzling intensity. And she writes a clear, precise prose
replete with striking antitheses and inventive analogies. Most
important for me, Ngai is the best-read theorist I have ever
encountered—for her scope and even more for her ability to find the
perfectly opposite argument to engage or to extend as she develops
her own case.
*Contemporary Literature*
Ugly Feelings is a thought provoking book in the aesthetics of
negative feelings with insightful reflections upon the social and
experiential impact of artistic creations.
*Metapsychology*
One of the most intellectually dazzling and wide-ranging critical
studies to appear in years. This is, in fact, far more than a book
about emotions. Taken chapter by chapter, it is a series of
commanding readings of notoriously ‘unfriendly’ texts… At its
broadest, [it] entails a rejection of Jameson’s influential notion
of ‘the “waning” of negative affect’ in late modernity or
postmodernity, replaced by a glossily untroubled surface. Instead,
Ngai asserts, we should recognize the consistent pockmarking of
that surface by ugly feelings… Where other readings tend to see the
ugly feelings in books…as a problem to get past—an indication, say,
of ‘repression’—Ngai, characteristically, treats them in productive
terms, as generative of the text’s overall ‘tone’… To the extent
there is a critical capacity to the ugly feelings she describes,
then, it would seem to lie in their ability to make emotional
quagmires from which we might rather turn away matter deeply to us.
On an intellectual level, then, this is precisely the feat
performed by Ngai’s wonderful book.
*Modernism/modernity*
The book is rewarding for the originality of its perspective.
*Choice*
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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