{"title":"The Limits of the Cute: The Persistence of Use in Lorine Niedecker's Poetics","authors":"Kelly Hoffer","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0015","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In Our Aesthetic Categories (2012), Sianne Ngai theorizes the \"cute,\" interpreting the turn to the small object in twentieth-century avant-garde poetry as a symptom of late capitalism's hyper-commodification. In response, this essay argues that the cute fails to accurately describe the projects of some avant-garde poets such as Lorine Niedecker. While Ngai's theory presumes a bourgeois subject who projects a sensuous relationship onto objects, obscuring the reality of commodification, Niedecker's poems do not enjoy the luxury of this projection. As a working-class poet, she is aware of objects' impact on her comfort and survival as part of her daily labors. Instead, Niedecker's poems offer a portrait of objects in use, recognizing the poet's reliance on material conditions to live, and further, to create.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cultural Critique","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0015","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:In Our Aesthetic Categories (2012), Sianne Ngai theorizes the "cute," interpreting the turn to the small object in twentieth-century avant-garde poetry as a symptom of late capitalism's hyper-commodification. In response, this essay argues that the cute fails to accurately describe the projects of some avant-garde poets such as Lorine Niedecker. While Ngai's theory presumes a bourgeois subject who projects a sensuous relationship onto objects, obscuring the reality of commodification, Niedecker's poems do not enjoy the luxury of this projection. As a working-class poet, she is aware of objects' impact on her comfort and survival as part of her daily labors. Instead, Niedecker's poems offer a portrait of objects in use, recognizing the poet's reliance on material conditions to live, and further, to create.
期刊介绍：
Cultural Critique provides a forum for international and interdisciplinary explorations of intellectual controversies, trends, and issues in culture, theory, and politics. Emphasizing critique rather than criticism, the journal draws on the diverse and conflictual approaches of Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, political economy, and hermeneutics to offer readings in society and its transformation.
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