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E-book
Author Ngai, Sianne, author

Title Theory of the gimmick : aesthetic judgment and capitalist form / Sianne Ngai
Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 2020
©2020

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Description 1 online resource (401 pages) : illustrations
Contents Theory of the gimmick -- Transparency and magic in the gimmick as technique -- Readymade ideas -- It follows, or financial imps -- Visceral abstractions -- Rødland's gimmick -- The color of value: Stan Douglas's Suspiria -- Henry James's "same secret principle"
Summary "The gimmick lies latent in every made thing in capitalism, from the banana slicer to the cryptocurrency derivative to the readymade artwork that interprets itself. It includes both the painstakingly devised and the gratuitously disposable. It is what we call things when uncertain if they are over- or underperforming, if they are historically backward or just as problematically advanced, if they are wonders or tricks. With its promises about the saving of time; the reduction of labor; and the expansion of value, the gimmick gives us tantalizing glimpses of a world in which social life will no longer be organized by labor, but also of one regenerating the conditions that keep labor's social necessity in place. As Ngai takes us from the hoaxes of Edgar Allen Poe to artist Stan Douglas's interest in outmoded special effects, we begin to see how the aesthetic manipulation of the gimmick points to a much deeper exploitation. Against academic claims about Marx's value-labor theory's obsolescence, the gimmick reveals it as vibrantly alive in the realm of aesthetics"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on December 16, 2020)
Subject Aesthetics, Modern -- 20th century.
Aesthetics, Modern -- 21st century.
Aesthetics, Modern -- Philosophy
Hoaxes.
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Capitalism.
PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics
Aesthetics, Modern
Capitalism
Hoaxes
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Literary theory.
Philosophy: aesthetics.
Popular philosophy.
Literature.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2019038757
ISBN 0674245369
9780674245365
9780674245341
0674245342
9780674245310
0674245318