Ad

Ugly Feelings by Sianne Ngai

by Sianne Ngai
Harvard University Press, 2005
Review by Dina Mendonça, Ph.D. on Oct 27th 2005

Ugly Feelings is a thought provoking book in the aesthetics of negative feelings with insightful reflections upon the social and experiential impact of artistic creations. Examining the political ambiguous work of some negative emotions, Sianne Ngai calls attention to certain features of cultural artifacts, of political action, and of emotional processes, which come to the surface because of the intersection of interests of this book.

Ad

After an introduction where Ngai states the purpose of the book, some of the underlying distinctions and philosophical problems that surround the subject of the book, and a short description of the ugly feelings, she begins with a chapter on Tone.  By tone Ngai means the overarching feeling of an artifact: something that makes it possible for a work to be described with a certain affective valence. The main goal of the chapter is to develop a vocabulary to better analyze tone. Ngai does this by showing how in The Confident Man: His Masquerade (1857) Melville creates a “fake” feeling, such that when we see it through the lenses of the idea of amplification of affect of Silvan Tomkins, it becomes an illustration of a model of dissonance. One of the interesting points of the chapter is the verification of how detachment is attained by affect (not from feeling but by feeling) such that the emotional distance required by the aesthetic relationship can only be successfully produced affectively.

The next chapter examines Animatedness as one of the ways in which affect becomes publicly visible. Here Ngai explores the ambiguity of animatedness showing how it seems to have both an unintentional form (being moved) and an intentional form (being moved by this or that). Analyzing the semantic proximity with agitation, Ngai brings out in this chapter questions about agency in uncovering the emotional background of the concept of political agitator. The primary focus of Ngai is on the social powerless basing her analysis on the debate surrounding Fox Television’s animation comedy series The PJs (1998-2000). 

Therapists are Standing By to Treat Your Depression, Anxiety or Other Mental Health Needs

Explore Your Options Today

Ad

The third chapter reflects upon Envy, which appears, according to Ngai, as the best example of a political equivocal feeling.  Through a variety of literature on envy (both from classic writings such as Freud and Klein as well as recent feminist debates), Ugly Feelings shows how envy can be used both to explore the value of political antagonism, and simultaneously mark the limitations of identification. Ngai shows how envy is never recognized as a valid mode of reacting to social and cultural disparities, despite its capacity to identify inequalities. In order to illustrate the political dynamics of envy, Ngai comments the film All About Eve and the film Single White Female, shifting the analysis from the typical analysis based on vexed female relationships made to this type of films, by focusing on desire and identification and how these function within the logic of envy and emulation.

The following chapter on Irritation analyzes the subtle emotional process of irritation with the novel Quicksand written by Nella Larsen in 1928. In the background of this chapter there is a shift of attention from the aesthetics of emotional excess to the issues of affective illegibility, as a way to explore the problem of inadequate anger. Ngai’s analysis of the character Helga Crane interestingly shows how irritation can be both an excess and a deficiency of anger.  Most interestingly, Ngai shows at the end of the chapter how irritation can be solicited by a novel not by sympathy or volunteered passion but in a third manner where a novel makes us feel what the character feels but not for the reasons the character feels it.

 The fifth chapter on Anxiety examines representations of anxiety in works of Herman Melville, Alfred Hitchcock, and Martin Heidegger. Ngai begins by inquiring how does anxiety come to acquire a special status in Western culture such that is becomes a distinctive trait of intellectual inquiry. Ngai points out that the trait of existentialist philosophy of making anxiety a key aspect of the human condition is a trait of the emotional space of male intellectuals. Using Hitchcock’s Vertigo, this chapter draws a picture of anxiety exploring the mechanism of disclosure of anxiety suggested by Heidegger.

The next chapter explores “Stuplimity,” a feeling of a synthesis of boredom and shock, through the literature of exhausting repetitions such as Gertrude Stein book The Making of Americans. Stuplimity appears in contrast with the sublime, offering no transcendence, but nevertheless playing an interesting role in aesthetic experience by providing sequences of small resistances and small confrontations. Throughout this chapter Ngai wants to call our attention for the fact that at the core of the aesthetic importance of ugly feelings is their tendency to promote meta-responses, that is feelings about feelings.

The following chapter on Paranoia uses the TV show X-Files to ground the analysis of how paranoia is in the background of gender characterization, more specifically at the base of feminist language. This chapter can be seen as complementary to the chapter on anxiety, where anxiety is identified as a feeling of the male intellectual world, suggesting that a sexual polarity of the traditional philosophical dualistic position continues to be in place.

Finally, the book ends with an Afterword: On Disgust, in which Ngai points out how it has been demonstrated that desire and disgust are dialectically conjoined.

Based on writings of Kant, Adam Smith, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Nussbaum, this last chapter analyzes the differences and interferences of disgust and contempt, showing how disgust offers an entirely different set of aesthetics and critical possibilities than those offered by desire.

The main goal of Ugly Feelings is to reanimate aesthetics by examining the politically ambiguous work of negative emotions. Though animatedness, envy, irritation, anxiety, stuplimity, paranoia, and disgust are all characterized by a weak intentionality and, as Ngai points out, are explicitly amoral and noncathartic, they nevertheless draw us closer to the domain of political theory by expressing political commitments. While reading Ugly Feelings one feels the need to be acquainted or become acquainted with the works of art that serve as the background for its insightful reflections. Nevertheless, the invisible powerful impact of small, and little ugly feelings becomes visible for every reader.

© 2005 Dina Mendonça

Dina Mendonça is a Postdoctoral Fellow of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, at the Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem in the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Working in a research program on “Pragmatic Analysis of Emotion.” This research, of Deweyan inspiration, aims at elaborating a critical interpretation of the philosophy of emotions clarifying: on the one hand, (1) the different methodological approaches to emotions; on the other hand, (2) the topics that surround reflection upon emotion. Among other things, the project aims at the production of a commented bibliography and a research database on philosophy of emotion.