“In an equally counterintuitive fashion, affect’s distinctive function of amplifying the awareness and effects of other functions is based on its ability… — Sianne Ngai Copy Share Image
“The Confidence-Man is actually anaphoric in its narrative structure, insofar as its entire plot consists of a series of exchanges involving one… — Sianne Ngai Confidence Copy Share Image
“ask these questions not to dispute the tone Jameson attributes to these postmodern artifacts—the exhilaration he is speaking of is clearly of… — Sianne Ngai Copy Share Image
“Instead, I mean the formal aspect of a literary work that makes it possible for critics to describe a text as, say,… — Sianne Ngai Writer Copy Share Image
“Tomkins ultimately bases his theory of affect on a principle he calls “analog amplification.” He describes affect as a mechanism that magnifies… — Sianne Ngai Copy Share Image
“For example, while there is nothing redeeming about the “eager” disposition of opportunism, its “‘truth’ . . . what might be called its neutral kernel, resides… — Sianne Ngai Opportunism Copy Share Image
“Indeed, as a system of exchange based on a highly codified feeling that is continually reproduced and circulated even as it cannot… — Sianne Ngai Books Copy Share Image
“Affective amplification does not simply turn up the volume on what is already there, but points to the presence of something “separate.”… — Sianne Ngai Amplification Copy Share Image
“Aristotle have shown how the principle of mutual fear actively binds men into the contracts that support the political commonwealth, and how… — Sianne Ngai Anger Copy Share Image
“played. While this unintended crackle, generated by an overproximity between transmitter and receiver, explicitly recalls the static that appears in Thomas’ photographic… — Sianne Ngai Copy Share Image
“as well as over potentially ennobling or morally beatific states like sympathy, melancholia, and shame (the emotions given the most attention in… — Sianne Ngai Character Copy Share Image
“My assumption is that affects are less formed and structured than emotions, but not lacking form or structure altogether; less “sociolinguistically fixed,”… — Sianne Ngai Copy Share Image
“For although dysphoric affects often seem to be the psychic fuel on which capitalist society runs, envy, paranoia, and all the emotional… — Sianne Ngai Copy Share Image
“The asymmetry of power that cuteness revolves around is another compelling reminder of how aesthetic categories register social conflict. There can be… — Sianne Ngai Beauty Copy Share Image
“In other words, a positional parallelism in which sound is foregrounded as an independent feature (Nathanson, WP, 140), comes to override an… — Sianne Ngai Language Copy Share Image
“Note how the basic principles of Tomkins’ systems theory, “coassembly” and “amplification,” are taken to increasing levels of reflexive complexity here. Affect… — Sianne Ngai Single moment Copy Share Image
