Sianne Ngai’s concept of minor aesthetic categories was developed to think about “aesthetic experiences grounded in equivocal affects”. I worked to think through the concept of ‘meta’ as it circulates in popular culture as a similar minor aesthetic category. Like Ngai’s three examples — the cute, the zany, and the interesting — ‘meta’ is characterised […]
Category Archives: Affective Cycle
Boredom
The first post in a series on The Affective Cycle of Popular Culture on Boredom. General disclaimer: It is the basis for a lecture on the topic. It is note-based without substantial examples and without any context-setting work for the readings (e.g. who is Kracauer and what was the intellectual context of his article?). The […]
The Affective Cycle of Popular Culture
I would like to teach a course called the “The Affective Cycle of Popular Culture”. Most courses on popular culture are organised around a particular segment of popular culture, such as an industry or particular form of cultural commodity, and then the cultural dimensions of this industry or cultural commodity. I would prefer to follow […]