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Annual Lecture – Professor Sianne Ngai

Thursday 16th November, 2017

6.30pm, Arts Two Lecture Theatre, Arts Two Building, QMUL (Mile End)

We are delighted that Professor Sianne Ngai (University of Chicago) will give the Centre for the History of the Emotions Annual Lecture for 2017 on Thursday 16 November at 6.30pm in the Arts Two Lecture Theatre, QMUL (Mile End Campus). Professor Ngai’s lecture is titled ‘The Gimmick as Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form’. Booking is essential.

Abstract:

Using examples from philosophy, literature and anthropology, this talk explores the gimmick as a form that simultaneously repels and attracts us and the judgment by which we express this ambivalent mixture of feelings. As both a compromised aesthetic form and an equivocal aesthetic judgment stemming from the recognition of interlinked contradictions surrounding labor, time, and value, the gimmick offers us a surprisingly rich place to think about capitalist aesthetics and the intertwining of technique and enchantment therein.

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Doors at 6, lecture at 6.30. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Arts Two Building. All welcome.