“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Sianne Ngai on Strange Aesthetics

Thanks Derek Woods! This is interesting.

2 comments:

John B-R said...

I hate to be a nit picker but it's actually Adam Jasper talking to Sianne Ngai, Tim. Not "Jasper Ngai" - unless you meant to insert a slash in between ...

Slap me now. But this is what happens to librarians after a few decades.

Oh, and I'm glad you're so happy in Texas.

Bill Benzon said...

Thanks, Tim. This is in my sweet spot. Cute and zany are all over cartoons. Alas, Ngai doesn't seem to know anything about them. Cartoons were zany at the height of Fordism so there's nothing post-Fordist about it. Though perhaps the capital "A" Artistic avant-garde was asleep at the wheel and didn't get the message. Perhaps as sons and daughters of the elite they wouldn't have been as familiar with factory work.