Scenes of Error
For almost two decades, Sianne Ngai has probed affect as a diagnostic tool for understanding forms of life and culture under contemporary capitalism. Her work has looked at ‘negative’ feelings – such as irritation, envy, disgust, boredom – and the cultural forms they give rise to, as well as the linguistic and aesthetic categories – such as ‘cute’ and ‘interesting’ – that we use to describe cultural products and the feelings they inspire.
Her talk will draw from her current research for a book about the ways in which Marx, Hegel, and a number of writers and artists inhabit error. Interweaving philosophical meditations on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, literary theorist Kenneth Burke’s concept of ‘dramatism’, and images of visual artist Ebecho Muslimova, it will explore the affective dimensions of dialectical thinking, especially as the latter involves the risky act of staging and lingering in scenes of error.
is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in English at the University of Chicago. Her work is concerned with the analysis of aesthetic forms and judgments specific to capitalism. Her publications include Ugly Feelings (2005), Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (2012, Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize) and Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form (2020).
In English