Sianne NgaiReviews

I've got to page 52 in this book which is, not coincidentally, the end of the introduction. It has been hard going so far but thought-provoking. I hadn't read any aesthetic theory before, unless Adorno's [b:Minima Moralia|201388|Minima Moralia|Theodor W. Adorno|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388215583s/201388.jpg|313155] counts? (That probably touches on aesthetics at various points.) I don't intend to go back to this book in the immediate future as the remaining 180 pages will doubtless take considerable time and concentration. More importantly, someone has recalled it to the library, presumably because they need it for actual academic research purposes rather than general leisure reading.

Thus far, I like the taxonomy of zany, cute, and interesting. The prose in which this is explained can become very dense, though. For example:

'Yet these contradictory feelings are not held in an indefinite tension as the affects of desperate labouring and lighthearted play are by the zany, or as aggression and tenderness are by the cute. What makes the sublime 'sublime' is precisely the fact of its emphatic affective resolution, the way in which the initial feeling of discord ends up being unmistakeably overwritten by what Kant calls 'respect' (or what Burke calls 'delight').'