On emotions
Selective notes on: Ngai, S (2005) Ugly
Feelings. London: Harvard Educational Press.
Dave Harris
Chapter on tone outlines the
problems, discussed by some really big hitting
philosophers including Adorno and Heidegger.
Affect is crucial in guiding modifying or
amplifying all the other activities of
consciousness, including perception, but it is not
present in its actual manifestations. It is
located somewhere else. [For me, having just read
Proust on the
way that his romantic gaze works, it is clear that
affect involve synthesising elements of the past
to the present, that the present components work
as signs or symbols]. As I have said in my
own summary, you can read this as a kind of early
phenomenology, with notions of the through- and-
through-interconnectedness-of-subjective-time.
Much of this will be taken for granted, of
course. Proust can be picked up for using
the term ‘symbol’ because that implies some shared
experiences and understandings, with precisely the
effects that Bourdieu describes in the operation
of the habitus, including social distanciation
implied by being especially ‘cultivated’ or
intuitive as an artist.
Ngai makes an ingenious point in the process of
reviewing Melville’s Confidence Man, that the same
notion of an important absence informs the idea of
value in capitalist systems. Things have
settled down now, but in antebellum America, the
monetary system was still pretty haphazard, with
people writing their own scrips as IOUs or
promissory notes, which eluded best of all to the
idea that value was somewhere else, not even
embodied in the pieces of paper. The system
was also horribly vulnerable to fluctuations in
confidence. The style of the novel also
offers a kind of allusion to an absence, since the
characters never exactly speak directly of the
system, and we readers have to infer it.
Ngai relies on the work of Tomkins, a
psychological researcher whose interests include
the study of micro-expressions on the human face.
Affect amplifies perceptions etc he argues, later
‘resonates’ with their elements (a term Deleuze
likes a lot) as a better descroption of how
emotions transmit without actually amplifying.
There is an interesting methodological aside in
this work. Tomkins studies facial expression using
very high speed cameras to capture facial
expression, but the more detailed the record, the
more elusive they became.
There is also discussion of how the emotions of
the subject (reader, viewer) engage: sympathy (the
writer’s intention) when I feel what the character
feels, or projection (aka empathy) ( the
subnject’s enagagement). Ideally both work in
harmony,but this is depicted as perverse and
unsettling in the Confidence Man, the stupidity of
the dupe, the appalling lack of concern, and also
the need to defend ourselves against premature
concern. This meshes with Kantian
disinterestedness : the implication however is
that disinterestedness is itself a form of affect
(a version of Bourdieu’s point that it is an
aesthetic itself). In Adorno (on the aura),
disinterests is accompanied by ‘melancholy’ and
‘serenity’.
Envy a classic ugly feeling. About perception of
inequality but disvalued, as personal, based on
ressentiment ( itself degraded by
everyone).Clearly linked to degraded subjects who
feel it –proles and women. Both assocd feminine
and less tolerated in them. Good eg ambivs felt
towards negv emotns expressed by women. Led to
anxiety among feminists esp. [and thus denial] eg
in films like Single White Woman – jealous
friendships lead to violence etc., f friendships
generally probc. Denied etc but there is a lot of
aggression and hostility in debates among
feminists (some examples 135f, incl crit of Butler
136) so must be constrv to some extent. Poss even
rely on antagonism.
Leads to v good discussion feminist film
criticism. Proposes not redv binaries or psychoan
[with Freud’s Group Psychology and the analysis of
the ego as key text] , but reworking via discourse
of envy and emulation. These depend on but are
diff from usual concepts identity and desire.
Emuln, mimicry NOT only about wishing to be that
person. Can be aggressive, spoiling eg in parody
or satire [and in the film analysis, imitation
leaves original f as a substitute for her copy via
a mirror effect] Freud’s mistake to confuse
fantasy identification as full merger of self with
actual mimicry [NB the text looks v much like it
develops the concept of role model!] NGai
says Freud reserves latter to discuss relations
between girls and mums where it becomes a kind of
hysteria. Former is something ontological and
based on male personality, form of fantastic
identification with father etc –literal
imitation/identification ends in pathology of male
homosexuality. F seen as exemplary case of such
identificn.. hence f itself becomes centred round
emulation/identification. Inducements to
emulation, incl envy, thus become linked to f.,and
envy partic contagious among f ( as in example of
mass hysteria).HOwever, SWF shows an aggressive
lack of contagion among 2 f protagonists [whole
notion of singleness is also undermined, since one
of them used to be a twin and this explains her
collective personality which undermines the other]
.Whole example shows identification not only route
to pol solidarity though – antagonism also has imp
critical role [and so by extension, so does envy]
Those who give envy a purely destructive
appropriating or spoiling role include Klein. Ngai
says poss to include this spoiling as a rejn of
the idealized object of desire. Same with Freud on
jealousy. Again rejn of idealizn allows more
organic form of solidarity to emerge – or a more
fluid position open to negotiation and politics
[close to a kind of calculation of mutual interest
despite personal feelings] . [Useful to crit
empathy here as a form of imperialism of the Same,
as only sentimental identification etc] Almost
accepted in Freud where negv feelings force a kind
of solidarity, a theme found in lots of others
(166). Differences included via invagination for
Derrida. However, can be recuperd as in SWF by
argument that only petty and minor diffs
characterise fem envy.
On to ‘irritation’ as ‘minor, low intensity
negative affect’ (174) via a novel Quicksand where
it is all-pervading – characters ‘offish’ leads to
Aristotle on irritation as for not normal reasons.
Links back to Bartleby [and an earlier chapter on
race as involving something unusually animated,
physical, disturbing – this writer is a black
woman].Sim ambigs with raciality as with gender –
diffs to be celebrated incl by white modernists,
but notion of irritation more prodv than this.
Irritn as mood, unfocused rather than specific
emotion. Ambig in referring both to minds
and bodies hence metaphors of feeling sore etc.
{and hints of importance of skin in racial
politics] Novel can be read as search for an
object to pin it all on – certainly frequent
irritn as variety of petty details – smell of food
etc, inappropriate teacups {bit like Proust on
minor breaches of taste etc] ,but extended to
‘serious’ issues too, like racism. Seems therefore
politically weaker than other negv emotions like
anger (acceptable only if it is properly located
and deployed though, says Aristotle – too little
makes you a slave, too much makes you vexatious).
This can irritate the reader too –why do people
put up with so many minor insults etc. So what
should approp response be, esp to racial insults?
Can be matter of sanctimoniousness as well as
politics. Expect approp response again from
insulted subject.
Reader identificn can be with or against subjects
–‘volunteered passion’ ( 189), where reader
supplies the approp emotion [kind of legit
otherness?] . Irritn produces neither v clearly –
offishness [black people are not to be patronised
or othered etc] . Can lead to irritated crit of
author. Vol passion seems delibly blocked by
vagueness – an ‘aggressive kind of weakness’ (190)
. Busts racial sttype of black people as over
responsive, animated [and crits reponse of white
people who are equally animated when dancing or
applauding etc].
Shows again that not simple or permanent – in the
novel, disidentification can lead to
identification with another aspect of black
culture. Imp to avoid excessive identification
which must lead to conformity, nor to have to
constantly choose with each example. Ambigs
continued in ‘indirect free narration’ style. Also
enable narrator to distance herself now and then
(and she does so when discussing the politics of
representing black skin) [Lovely aside about
Marx’s carbuncles unable to be hidden in polite
society producing a ‘sarcastic body’ (206) –
Kipnis apparently who has made a video ‘Marx: the
Video’ ].Leads to more on irritations as
disturbing the otherwise pleasing bodies in the
white gaze.
Overall effect to deny easy identificns of black
bodies with meaning, either for or against, to
insist each one has to be interpretd and deny that
black people must always identify or disidentify.
Denies easy oppositn surfaces and depths, insists
that blank spaces be allowed to be what they are
and not repression.
Then anxiety. Future-oriented or expectant, not
already filled. Spatial di too –projected on to
others,including projd on to patients by
psychoanalsysts [source is a record of his own
analysis by LA! –The Future Lasts a Long Time,
1993] Freud sees it as originating outside,
though, as a threat or nasty experience of
expulsion, with projection part of the symptoms,
although no real discussion of projection even
though deployed a lot. She proposes to find egs in
fiction, via notion of ‘thrownness’.
Anxiety covers a lot of ground and is widespread
in West – actual examples imply a scepticism
though – eg ‘middle-class anxiety’. Also gendered.
M anxiety genuine, in Freud, based on
castration, f versions only react with ‘nostalgia
and envy’ (213). M embody anxiety, esp
intellectuals, long tradn m melancholy, now
associated being over civilized and bookish.
Conveyed as a journey [!] or quest, using terms
about being thrown or falling, vertigo etc.
As in Vertigo: hero as private
investigator/scholar, vertical di to his intell
distance emphd. F figs odd and duplicated,
screens for femnty [projn – geddit]. Appears first
as corseted [because of injury], freedom and
mascty will involve throwing it off. Eventually
all the women will also be thrown, out of windows
etc. Lots of detailed analysis of the film ensues
( 220—6).
Links Hedidegger and the thrownness of Dasein, its
Da, [actualization], becoming fact. Anxiety arises
as a turning away from this factuality, a
surrender to complexity. Anxiety from a mood of
turning away, not an expression of an inner
state..Moods as imp and originary as
understanding. As also in Kierkegaard where affect
and concept inextricably linked. Understanding
also a projection [the other way round?]. Weird
stuff ensues, including notion that thrownness of
Dasein is never complete,possibility inherent just
as with understanding. Leads to weird stuff
on anxiety and fear – latter involves a shrinking
back, former to something indeterminate, alluding
to the world itself in which Dasein thrown. Also
conveys possibs though and notion Dasein as
authentically in the world [gtee of objectivity of
the world?] Exper of anxiety unifies implicit
notions about Dasein and the world, reveal the
structure of the relation ( 235)
Then Melville’s Pierre. Plot is that P is trying
to engage in intell wk but this is complicated by
relationships with diff sorts of women [could also
be The Red and The Black]. [Discussion ensues 237
-46] .
Overall, anxiety seem to characterise masculine
struggles with nothingness and m quests for truth
and agency. Suggests no solid ground, but this
strangely relocates indivdlizn., again via a
distancing. Takes form of an aversion to negvty
itself.
Stuplimity seems to refer to being battered by
language into a numb sort of passivity [or maybe
not] Some excellent examples of poetry/prose that
plays with repetition and arbitrariness like the
piece made up of a list of all the words in Moby
Dick beginning with ‘un’ (258—9) – and
also ‘Moby- dictation’, based on the material
described by the sub-sub librarian [?]. Or
collections of found words [positively Oulippian
here but described as pomo parody—some Oulippians
are mentioned later e.g. 262]. [another excellent
example 260]. To induce fatigue in the reader. As
polar opposite to busyness and stupefaction [so
linked, she is going to argue?]. Both terms imply
an ignorant reaction on part of reader/viewer.
Potentially experimental though, and might be
linked. [I quite like this. I can see
this leading to a justification for boredom and
being overwhelmed when teaching, say, methods
courses. The usual approach is to try to
avoid boredom by having fun, but there is a
critical distance that arises, as well as, of
course the delayed pleasures of narrative
conclusions and so on. It might even be
possible to generate some sort of empathy with a
poor idiot being asked responses to 70 questions,
as well as asking what makes academic work boring
compared to more popular accounts, and what we are
to conclude from this about our culture generally
and academic culture specifically].
Certainly, repetition has its good side: no other
than Lacan has argued that repetition involves a
demand to find something new as well as
understanding why it produces boredom (262).
The same goes with 'stupendous proliferation of
discrete quanta', as in white paintings, or in
very very detailed installations [lovely examples
263]. The point is to illustrate how
language combines things and orders them in
agglomerations.
This is another example of her own negative
emotions can become important in aesthetic
experience. Even the sublime can be thought
of as an ugly feeling, contrast it with the
beautiful, and relating to the notion of excess,
the huge scale of nature or massive force
producing awe and dread. Yet the kantian
sublime does not grasp the sort of proliferation
described above. What the sublime does do
though, is restore and inspire rather than produce
permanent inadequacy, finding comfort in the
ability to contrast one's self as a creature of
reason, and this was Kant's purpose, to let us
experience 'an uplifting
transcendence'(267). [So as usual, if people
explain the intended aesthetic and cognitive
impact of boredom, it delivers a sense of
satisfaction that we are doing something important
but difficult, and that we will be a better person
afterwards? Reminds me of my attempt to
compare slogging through a methods text with doing
boring training before a rugby match]. These
feelings for Kant rise above the initial negative
feelings, and the sublime is the basis for the
claim of universal validity.
Maybe only nature has this uplifting effect,
though, and works of art drag us down back into
the senses. It is too involving.
Sublimity implies a safe distance. Anyway,
the intention is to induce boredom. Again,
though, the absence of immediate or positive
affect can lead to new aesthetic understandings,
in helping us grasp pure reason [the same argument
is made for emotional disinterestedness].
However, boredom can stupefy and inhibit
reason. There is a need for a new word to
describe the new aesthetic stuplimity. This
rescues the sublime from its spiritual and
transcendent roots and its connection with
romanticism. It combines boredom and
astonishment, holding both together in a tension
[a bit like reading this book!]. It appears
in the secular and in the more mundane or 'dirty'
forms of language.
This feeling is discussed by Deleuze as the
difficulty in moving from actual objects and words
[aka 'quaqua' in Beckett] to the virtual and to
concepts, [or from repetition to
difference]. What exist seems stubbornly
self sufficient. However, the sublime bit
encourages us to persist. [A Beckett example
ensues, How It Is 273 - 4] [I think the idea is
that we focus on what connects the characters,
finally giving up by a search to find empirical
laws in the repetitions. It reminds me of
Deleuze arguing that Proust's characters finally
get exhausted by are trying to find empirical
examples or demonstrations of emotions like love
or jealousy, and are desperately 'forced to think'
about the essential]. Or in the constant
comic disasters of characters like Keaton [which
finally leads us to see that there is an order or
logic to what is happening]. Unlike the
sublime, the stuplime starts with the immediate
and mechanical, and our understanding emerges
through repetition rather than taking a leap into
the sublime. Understanding becomes
exhausting, working through the detritus.
So this is different from simple hypnotic tedium
[which can itself lead to higher states of
consciousness, she reminds us ]. This
involves absorption not indifference. It is
both anti spiritual and anti cynical. It
requires attention to detail, including its
absurdity. Lacan has an example (279),
describing the emergent qualities of a collection
of empty matchboxes, revealing multiplicity and
thingness, as well as absurdity. This is the
structure of 'rise and fall'.
However, this is only a particular kind of
boredom, and there are others, including
'metaphysical boredom', where nothing can offer
shock value, and 'cynical boredom, which often
demands more than we are willing to give'
(281). That is because not all repetitions
are alike either (some seem to be farcical).
Repetition must be understood as Deleuze
understands it, as indicating difference, and this
can be a way of resisting empirical
repetition. This tendency to resist is 'an
indeterminate affective state'(284), more open,
not yet defined in terms of a particular emotion,
a neutral state.
This might be what Jameson means by the waning of
affect, (285 - ) discussed with free floating
feelings, no longer pinned down precisely.
Categories of time are replaced by those of
space. The simulacrum is the postmodern
form. It offers a kind of commercialised
sublimity, but is capable of still generating
euphoria [the example given is Jamieson on
postmodern objects, as pastiches, heaps of
fragments]. Ngai points out that this concept
retains the notion of the heap, some notion of a
whole. She also notes that fragmented
literature specifically still preserves the
supposedly outmoded subjective feelings of anxiety
and alienation. Perhaps the issue is one of
discussing forms of coherence, which might include
loosely organised and unstable forms, like heaps,
something that might appear incoherent in terms of
conventions or aesthetic ideals. The same
goes for the term consistency, which might mean
[mechanical or organic solidarity].
Coherence can also be emergent. It all
points to looking at types of coherence.
Deleuze is on the same track with his notion of
the passive synthesis. [Lots more on
Gertrude Stein]. We can see this in the
carefully elaborated apparently random
conglomeration of modern art, poems that seem to
be accidental and so on.
[There are also hints of passive resistance or the
fatalism of the masses as in Baudrillard].
Deleuze apparently sees a possible strategy of
resistance by taking everything literally and in
detail in a spirit of false submission, reducing
to absurdity and working to rule [with a reference
to something called DR—not referenced]. This
is what Deleuze calls humour, pursuing
consequences.
Paranoia, explaining the popularity of conspiracy
theories including X files. That example is
an exception to the normally gendered notion of
conspiracy and political thrillers. Jamieson
suggest that this is a discussion of the role of
the postmodern intellectual, to pursue infinite
networks. This explains paranoia not as a
mental illness but the fear of the social system,
including the intellectual as enemy of the system,
which can take the form of objecting to grand
narratives. Some feminists have also
attempted to claim paranoia is a general model,
drawing on Freudian hints that it might take a
feminine form in jealousy.
Some notion of the system seems essential,
including notions of patriarchy, even though their
abstraction is debatable. Denying the status
of general concepts risks reducing critique to
subjective emotionalism. At the same time,
paranoia clearly overlaps with ordinary
fear. Paranoia has its place in the
development of the subject, as in Klein, and it
might be the price to be paid for subjectivity in
capitalism.
Sometimes this notion of paranoid fear has become
enacted in American female poetry [discussed 303
F]. There is a fear about unintended
collusion. This work also raises the issue
of 'the vexed a relationship between poetry and
theory' (304) of concern to feminist writers in
particular [weird examples 304, 305].
[Somehow] it is related to the issues of readerly
and writerly texts. Writerly characteristics
are found in classic as well as post modern
novels. This provides a 'belated' (307)
quality to post readings. This is not just
an historical matter. It connects with an
argument that says that 'language-centred
writing'is really just trying to imitate
[literary] theory. It is likely that both
avant-garde writing and post structuralist theory
emerged in parallel, providing this sense of lag
or delay.
Kristeva on the pre-semiotic, and Deleuze and
Guattari on the rhizome both lead to the
suggestion that the best examples of post
structuralist theory are found in poetry.
Certainly, we can see trends in poetry as
helpfully illuminating post structural theory, and
vice versa: both refer to textual politics and to
the critique of liberal humanism, both stressed
difference and a multiplicity, flux and
ambiguity. Yet reading both appears to be
redundant: they fit too closely. This is
particularly affected feminist poetics.
Poetic explorations have often been associated
with the feminine, as Braidotti notes [best of all
accounts is the one in Gynesis, however, which
connects with the conspiracy theory version of
feminist critiques discussed later], as in Deleuze
is importance of becoming - woman. For
Braidotti, this can looks like the dethroning of
the rational subject at the wrong time, just when
women were becoming liberated into taking their
place as one.
There are also critics of feminist writers for
claiming that the avant-garde must necessarily
produce feminist discourse, as in Kristeva or
Cixous (312f). Feminist writing might be
recycling the old sexual oppositions, reworked as
linguistic characteristics [such as
fluidity/consistency]. Normal language is
seen as feminine as opposed to the rational
masculine discourse. Feminist language
becomes 'a belated modernism'(313) [for somebody
called Ross]. Feminist theory has only
discovered rules which have been acted on all
along. Ngai notes the similarity with conspiracy
thrillers, where the operation of the system is
finally exposed. There is also a similar
claim about the political possibilities of
avant-garde writing. [Apparently there are
considerable critiques now, both of 'language
feminism', and those based on an argument that the
avant-garde is indeed a masculinist cultural
foundation, and thus subject to feminist critique,
not participation, 315].
If former is always political, they can be no
politically neutral language. Perhaps we
should accept that there are masculine and
feminine languages. If masculine forms have
dominated, even poststructuralist discourses can
only be valued by feminists. A feminist
aesthetic, specifically, remains elusive.
Some feminists have argued that linguistic
categories should not be gendered, and that
therefore there is no specific feminine form,
despite its political advantages. Butler and
others have noted the difficulties of avoiding
masculine binaries in their critiques, for
example. The suspicion of deeper complicity
produces a sense of paranoia.
More poetic possibilities are discussed 318--31
[one, by Spahr, seems to involve systematic
indeterminacy and that the gender of the speaking
subject, with an open comment about the
difficulties of ignoring gendered pronouns—a kind
of lipogram in gender. Ngai notes the paranoid
tone where everything seems to be connected to
everything else, and these links must always be
spelled out. The commentary, which seems to
adopt official psychiatric descriptions, indicates
watch imminence by belatedness compared to the
spontaneity of life communication, and the
commentator stands for the poet herself].
[This certainly complicates the notion of feminine
writing!]. Yet this paranoia is also
supposed to prompt thinking, to realise the
situation.
In the afterword, we discuss disgust, and never
really the subject of particular theories of
poetics [except in the work of anthropologists
like Mary Douglas]. Kristeva's abjection is
reconceptualised in terms of desire and even
jouissance. Proust has similar complications
in the relations of the narrator to women, who are
both beautiful and disgusting. Others have
shown the link between desire and disgust—John
Waters [Henry Miller]. Why this long
neglect?
Again we find a turning away in Bartleby, or
refusal to consume. Melville also describes
other characters who are repugnant as well as
fascinating. There is no attempt to pass in
the Goffman sense. Apparent tolerance often
conceals contempt. Disgust is therefore the
'ugly feeling par excellence'(334), and even Kant
said art could not redeem it. It is the
negation of beauty, an absolute other. It
imposes itself on us, knows that we want it,
prevents disinterestedness. However, it is
at least never ambivalent confusing, it always
produces a definite response, unlike any of the
other ambiguous emotions discust above. It
blocks sympathy. However, it does invite
agreement with others, and is more active than,
say, contempt [sharing the same sort of calmness
as toleration, she argues] faith
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