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The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture, dominating the look of its art and commodities as well as our ways of speaking ab

Christian Gauss Award ShortlistWinner of the ASAP Book PrizeA Literary Hub Book of the Year“Makes the case that the gimmick…is of tremendous critical

Acclaimed critic Sianne Ngai theorizes the gimmick as an aesthetic category reflecting the fundamental laws of capitalism. Gimmicks make promises of s

Ngai mobilizes the aesthetics of unprestigious negative affects such as irritation, envy, and disgust to investigate not only ideological and represen

Explores the historical and philosophical contexts of Cormac McCarthy's early works to demonstrate he integrates literary realism with the imagery and

The Cute tracks the astonishing impact of a single aesthetic category on post-war and contemporary art, and on the vast range of cultural practices an