Theory of the Gimmick

Christian Gauss Award Shortlist Winner of the ASAP Book Prize A Literary Hub Book of the Year Makes the case that the gimmickis of tremendous critical valueLies somewhere between critical theory and Sontags best work. Los Angeles Review of Books Ngai exposes capitalisms tricks in her mind-blowing study of the time- and labor-saving devices we call gimmicks. New Statesman One of the most creative humanities scholars working todayMy god, its so good. Literary Hub Ngai is a keen analyst of overlooked or denigrated categories in art and lifeHighly original. 4Columns It is undeniable that part of what makes Ngais analyses of aesthetic categories so appealingis simply her capacity to speak about them brilliantly. Bookforum A page turner. American Literary History Deeply objectionable and yet strangely attractive, the gimmick comes in many guises: a musical hook, a financial strategy, a striptease, a novel of ideas. Above all, acclaimed theorist Sianne Ngai argues, the gimmick strikes us both as working too little (a labor-saving trick) and working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention). When we call something a gimmick, we register misgivings that suggest broader anxieties about value, money, and time, making the gimmick a hallmark of capitalism. With wit and critical precision, Ngai explores the extravagantly impoverished gimmick across a range of examples: the fiction of Thomas Mann, Helen DeWitt, and Henry James; the video art of Stan Douglas; the theoretical writings of Stanley Cavell and Theodor Adorno. Despite its status as cheap and compromised, the gimmick emerges as a surprisingly powerful tool in this formidable contribution to aesthetic theory.