Books by Nicholas Holm
This critical introductory text explores the role of advertising in contemporary culture and its ... more This critical introductory text explores the role of advertising in contemporary culture and its connections to larger economic, social, and political forces. Written in an engaging and accessible style and incorporating a wide range of examples from around the world, the chapters introduce the key concepts, methods, and debates needed to analyse and understand advertising.
This book argues that recent developments in contemporary comedy have changed not just the way we... more This book argues that recent developments in contemporary comedy have changed not just the way we laugh but the way we understand the world. Drawing on a range of contemporary televisual, cinematic and digital examples, from Seinfeld and Veep to Family Guy and Chappelle’s Show, Holm explores how humour has become a central site of cultural politics in the twenty-first century. More than just a form of entertainment, humour has come to play a central role in the contemporary media environment, shaping how we understand ideas of freedom, empathy, social boundaries and even logic. Through an analysis of humour as a political and aesthetic category, Humour as Politics challenges older models of laughter as a form of dissent and instead argues for a new theory of humour as the cultural expression of our (neo)liberal moment.
This edited collection explores the relationships between humans and nature at a time when the tr... more This edited collection explores the relationships between humans and nature at a time when the traditional sense of separation between human cultures and a natural wilderness is being eroded. The ‘Anthropocene,’ whose literal translation is the ‘Age of Man,’ is one way of marking these planetary changes to the Earth system. Global climate change and rising sea levels are two prominent examples of how nature can no longer be simply thought of as something outside and removed from humans (and vice versa).
This collection applies the concepts of ecology and entanglement to address pressing political, social, and cultural issues surrounding human relationships with the nonhuman world in terms of ‘working with nature.’ It asks, are there more or less preferable ways of working with nature? What forms and practices might this work take and how do we distinguish between them? Is the idea of ‘nature’ even sufficient to approach such questions, or do we need to reconsider using the term nature in favour of terms such as environments, ecologies or the broad notion of the non-human world? How might we forge perspectives and enact practices which build resilience and community across species and spaces, constructing relationships with nonhumans which go beyond discourses of pollution, degradation and destruction? Bringing together a range of contributors from across multiple academic disciplines, activists and artists, this book examines how these questions might help us understand and assess the different ways in which humans transform, engage and interact with the nonhuman world.
An undergraduate textbook published by Palgrave MacMillan in late 2016. Advertising and Consumer ... more An undergraduate textbook published by Palgrave MacMillan in late 2016. Advertising and Consumer Society is an introduction to the critical study of advertising, exploring its role in our contemporary cultural landscape and its connections to larger economic, social and political forces. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the book provides students with the key concepts, methods and debates they will need to analyse and understand advertising.
Articles by Nicholas Holm
The European Journal ofHumour Research, 2024
Dignity is an important-perhaps even essential-aspect of a functioning public sphere: one where c... more Dignity is an important-perhaps even essential-aspect of a functioning public sphere: one where citizens can meet each other as equals and respectful antagonists in the exchange of different perspectives and reasoned opinions. This potentially poses a problem, however, for those who seek to invoke humour as a productive element of public conversation and deliberation. Even when humour is not explicitly critical, to treat a subject or person in comic terms is potentially to threaten their dignity in ways that could undermine their ability to meaningfully participate in the public sphere. In this article I argue that there is a need to more fully theorise 'dignity' in order to understand how humour circulates and functions in the public sphere. To that end, I first draw upon Axel Honneth's political theory of recognition as the basis for an expanded conception of dignity that can be understood as the basis for claiming membership of a political community. This model is then tested through a consideration of the physical comedy of 'pie-ing' as an example of the elementary conflict between humour and dignity. Finally, the concept of comic indignity is explored as a way to consider which members of a public sphere can afford to suffer slights to their dignity, which cannot, and how this unequal vulnerability to humour might provide the basis for a new model for assessing the politics of humour in the public sphere.
Thesis Eleven, 2023
In the first decades of the 21st century, humour has been increasingly embraced as a legitimate m... more In the first decades of the 21st century, humour has been increasingly embraced as a legitimate means by which to cover, analyse and intervene in political issues. Most frequently, this political application of humour has been interpreted through the lens of 'satire': a term that evokes an idea of humour as a politically meaningful cultural act. Such an account of humour connects satire with the long-standing theoretical tradition of 'cultural politics' that explores the ability and mechanism of cultural forms to inform, inspire or enact political change. However, while satire may appear as the manifestation or culmination of a cultural political agenda, I argue that the concept ultimately works towards the closure of cultural political possibility. Drawing on the work of Georg Lukács and Fredric Jameson, I argue that satire is better understood as a form of reification that prematurely resolves how, when and why cultural forms can do politics.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2023
In this introduction to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism special issue on the aestheti... more In this introduction to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism special issue on the aesthetics of creative activism, we canvas influential scholarship of political aesthetics to sculpt a broad typology of six interconnected mechanisms by which art might intervene in the world. We label these: Documentation, Disruption, Recognition, Participation, Imagination, and Beauty. Each has a compelling tradition of theory and application, augmented, extended, and sometimes challenged by the thirteen fresh and provocative contributions in the special issue. Yet, we ask, if both politically minded artists and culturally minded activists are convinced of the power of art to provoke social change, and if we live a world that by almost all measures is now saturated with politically inclined, aesthetically informed practices, interfaces, objects, and texts, why does art not seem to be making a difference? Clearly, we need to think harder about the relationships between art and action, a task the articles assembled here call upon us to take seriously.
Media Theory , 2023
What is the fate of critique-especially media critique-in a social context that widely and enthus... more What is the fate of critique-especially media critique-in a social context that widely and enthusiastically embraces criticism and critical approaches? Starting from the position that critique has become a widespread intellectual orientation across both intellectual work and popular cultural engagement, this article discusses how media critique might produce meaningful and productive knowledge when a critical attitude towards the media is widely considered common sense. Arguing against perspectives that would make postcritique the enemy of critique, it suggests that critique would be better able to illuminate the current conjuncture if the aggression of critical suspicion were replaced with a more democratic and reflexive form of critical doubt.
Te Reo , 2023
Incidents of humour in the radio commentary of rugby union provide an example of semispontaneous ... more Incidents of humour in the radio commentary of rugby union provide an example of semispontaneous humour that exists between informal conversation and professional performance. This is exemplified in analysis of the reporting, both quantitative and qualitative, of two teams of commentators providing commentary on the same three rugby union test matches. In order to account for the formal qualities and broadcast nature of this humour, the analysis develops a mixed method approach that combines quantitative analysis with both literary and conversational approaches to humour. The resulting analysis suggests that micro communities of practice evolve their own patterns of use for humour that draw on a common pool of strategies. It is argued that this particular form of conversational humour is best understood in relation to the social and cultural context of its broadcast, rather than in terms of the interpersonal dynamics of the participants.
European Journal of Humour Studies, 2023
Dignity is an important—perhaps even essential—aspect of a functioning public sphere: one where c... more Dignity is an important—perhaps even essential—aspect of a functioning public sphere: one where citizens can meet each other as equals and respectful antagonists in the exchange of different perspectives and reasoned opinions. This potentially poses a problem, however, for those who seek to invoke humour as a productive element of public conversation and deliberation. Even when humour is not explicitly critical, to treat a subject or person in comic terms is potentially to threaten their dignity in ways that could undermine their ability to meaningfully participate in the public sphere.
In this article I argue that there is a need to more fully theorise ‘dignity’ in order to understand how humour circulates and functions in the public sphere. To that end, I first draw upon Axel Honneth’s political theory of recognition as the basis for an expanded conception of dignity that can understood as the basis for claiming membership of a political community. This model is then tested through a consideration of the physical comedy of ‘pie-ing’ as an example of the elementary conflict between humour and dignity. Finally, the concept of comic indignity is explored as a way to consider which members of a public sphere can afford to suffer slights to their dignity, which cannot, and how this unequal vulnerability to humour might provide the basis for a new model for assessing the politics of humour in the public sphere
European Journal of Cultural Studies , 2022
For such a complex cultural form, the politics of humour have historically been understood in hig... more For such a complex cultural form, the politics of humour have historically been understood in highly reductive terms: either as an abstract political function (e.g. carnival or ridicule) or as a simple formal flourish that can be pressed into the service of any cause. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams and Jacques Rancière, I argue instead for a ‘political aesthetic’ model that grasps humour as a cultural formation, the politics of which cannot be determined in advance or in the abstract but only understood in relation to the political, economic and social elements of a wider conjuncture. This political aesthetic approach will be illustrated through a case study of the historical development of the internationally distributed Adult Swim programming block: an example of how shifts in economic and technological context can lead to shifts in the political meaning of a persistent comic aesthetic. At the forefront of an emergent comic formation in the early 2000s, Adult Swim’s once niche comic aesthetic now informs dominant models of online humour in ways that threaten to mitigate, or even reverse, the critical cultural politics of its earlier iterations.
New Media & Society, 2021
This article explores how the prevalence of deadpan and ironic modes of humour undermines the pos... more This article explores how the prevalence of deadpan and ironic modes of humour undermines the possibility of clear and stable interpretation in online contexts. Analysing key examples of online deadpan humour through the lens of literary and critical models of irony, I argue that the decontextualisation of deadpan humour in online spaces accentuates the deadpan comic mode’s tendency towards ambiguity in ways that hypothetically destabilise any claim to textual certainty. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, I propose the ‘comic disposition’ as a means to theorise how audiences learn to process the comic ambiguity of online deadpan humour, and suggest how the ‘comic disposition’ can be understood to inform observed tendencies towards distrust and confusion in digital culture.
Cultural Studies, 2021
In 2020, in the face of the unparalleled epidemiological threat posed by Covid-19, multiple gover... more In 2020, in the face of the unparalleled epidemiological threat posed by Covid-19, multiple governments around the world sought to contain the spread of the virus by imposing strict lockdown measures that dramatically limited the movement and gathering of citizens. Not only did these restrictions severely curtail the regular patterns of economic, political and cultural life, they also made it very hard to have fun. While this last point may appear flippant, this article proposes that a proper accounting for fun is absolutely necessary if we are to understand not just the challenges passed by lockdown measures, but also the legal and biomedical risks people were willing to take to engage in activities like hosting parties, surfing and attending raves, during a pandemic. Arguing against the idea of fun as a form of displaced political practice, I instead suggest that fun is best understood as an example of contingent, non-transcendent aesthetic value that is absolutely central to everyday desire and the appeal of popular culture. Often easy to overlook, the experience of lockdown brought the appeal and importance of fun into sharp relief in ways that point towards the powerful role fun plays in shaping our lives both during a pandemic and (hopefully) after.
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2021
'Britain’ has always been an odd entity in American superhero comics: not least in Marvel Comics’... more 'Britain’ has always been an odd entity in American superhero comics: not least in Marvel Comics’ Excalibur. At turns, innocently quirky and wryly cynical, Excalibur’s Britain has been a markedly different place in the hands of different writers (and artists). This article addresses three key runs of Excalibur – those of Chris Claremont, Alan Davis and Warren Ellis – with particular attention to the depiction of Britain not simply as a matter of discourse and representation, but also in terms of tone and theme. Drawing on the political aesthetics of Jacques Rancière, the article explores what it means to talk about a specifically ‘British’ take on superhero comics. Through a critical analysis of how the different eras of Excalibur present different takes on what is ostensibly a British style of representation, the article explores how the form of a comic book, as well as its content, might be though to express assumptions about particular national identities and political communities.
The European Journal of Humour Research, 2021
This article takes up the transnational comedy career of Trevor Noah as a way to explore how the ... more This article takes up the transnational comedy career of Trevor Noah as a way to explore how the political work of racial comedy can manifest, circulate and indeed communicate differently across different racial-political contexts. Through the close textual analysis of two key comic performances –“The Daywalker” (2009) and “Son of Patricia” (2018), produced and (initially) circulated in South Africa and the USA, respectively – this article explores the extent to which Noah’s comic treatment of race has shifted between the two contexts. In particular, attention is paid to how Noah incites, navigates and mitigates potential sources of offence surrounding racial anxieties in the two contexts, and how he evokes his own “mixed-race” status in order to open up spaces of permission that allow him to joke about otherwise taboo subjects. Rejecting the claim that the politics of Noah’s comedy is emancipatory or progressive in any straightforward way, by means of formal analyses we argue that ...
New Formations, 2020
In addition to accusations of authoritarianism, arbitrariness, and inefficiency, one of the more ... more In addition to accusations of authoritarianism, arbitrariness, and inefficiency, one of the more persistent criticisms of bureaucracy is that it tends to be really rather quite boring. Yet while this boringness has historically informed both scholarly and popular forms of anti-bureaucratic critique, in this article I also argue that it also might reflect necessary, and even desirable, aspects of democratic political practice. Working in conversation with fictional texts that have sought to represent this bureaucratic boringness, in particular The Apartment (1960) and The Pale King (2011), this article traces how the aesthetic quality of boringness has historically been understood as a means by which bureaucratic systems can facilitate oppressive and anti-democratic forms of politics. However, with reference to recent attempts to automate and streamline contemporary bureaucratic systems, I argue that it does not necessarily follow that the elimination of boringness makes such systems more accessible and responsive. Instead, I suggest that boringness is better understood dialectically as a difficult but potentially necessary part of living together in complex societies. In doing so, I aim to not just partially redeem bureaucracy and boringness, but also argue for the necessity of an anti-heroic mode of politics.
Cultural Studies, 2020
In Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu famously proposes the concept of an ‘aesthetic disposition’: a ca... more In Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu famously proposes the concept of an ‘aesthetic disposition’: a capacity to conceive the world in terms of form rather than function. Acquired through education, this disposition serves as a key marker of cultural privilege. Building on subsequent critical discussions regarding the applicability of aesthetic disposition (or lack of) beyond Bourdieu’s own context, I argue that in the contemporary cultural context, formal appreciation has been supplanted by critical reading as a marker of a privileged and educated orientation towards culture and that this ‘critical disposition’ is directly relevant to the project of cultural studies. Addressing the importance of critical reading in new venues of cultural criticism, I argue that the elevation of critical over formal orientations towards culture speaks to the success of certain forms of cultural studies, but also threatens to associate critique with privilege in ways that undercut its emancipatory promise.
Open Cultural Studies
To reflect on the relationship between "cultural studies" and "aesthetics" is to master the art o... more To reflect on the relationship between "cultural studies" and "aesthetics" is to master the art of holding two opposing insights in mind at once. In theory, at least as set out by some of cultural studies' leading lights, the aesthetic is bound up with forms of privilege, mysticism and elitism that are anathema to the key critical currents in the field. In practice, however, aesthetic engagement and aesthetic evaluation remain popular tools of the critical trade. Cultural studies, it seems, does not "do" aesthetics-except, of course, when it always does.1 And this constitutive inconsistency has deep (inter)disciplinary roots. While clearly a function of cultural studies' repudiation of philosophical aesthetics and received notions of high culture, cultural studies' fraught relationship with the aesthetic is also a legacy of the field's fraught relationship with Marxist cultural theory, a diverse body of scholarship with a long history of politically-and historicallyengaged forms of aesthetic analysis. The theme of 'capitalist aesthetics' that frames this issue, then, is dual in its critical affordances. On the one hand, it points forward, providing a glimpse of what cultural studies might look like if it more explicitly embraced aesthetic attention and aesthetic discrimination. On the other, it points backward, inviting us to trace existing histories of contact and divergence between cultural studies and an array of critical practices that have acknowledged the significance of form, sensation and judgment in shaping the political and social meaning of everyday cultural experiences. Parallel Histories "Aesthetics" has not always been a pejorative term in cultural studies circles. For Raymond Williams, a foundational figure in the field, the aesthetic named a key area of critical concern that spoke to both the experiences of everyday people and the political possibilities of form (Bérubé 9-16; Gilbert, "Cultural Studies and Anti-Capitalism" 181-4; Williams, Marxism and Literature 151-158). Yet at least as early as the 1980s-that moment when cultural studies made its "full appearance on the intellectual scene [as] an important, ongoing approach to the study of culture" (Szeman et al. xx)-a clear anti-aesthetic position began to crystallise. The position was on full display by the late 1980s and early '90s, with the formative Urbana-Champaign conferences and the influential mega-anthologies to which they gave rise. In the first of those anthologies, 1988's Marxism and Interpretation of Culture, the term "aesthetic" receives only passing mention from Franco Moretti and Fredric Jameson, while Michèle Barrett's contribution foregrounds the term only to forsake the concept, characterizing the rise of cultural studies as the "marginalization of aesthetic questions in the interpretation of culture" (701). By the time of the field-defining second anthology, 1992's Cultural Studies (Grossberg et al.), just four years later, this indifference towards aesthetics 1 While recognising that cultural studies has diverse and complex origins, we are focusing exclusively on the Birmingham and post-Birmingham manifestations of the field as the key loci for discussions regarding aesthetics, Marxism and cultural studies.
Society and Animals, 2020
Cats confound clear distinctions: not least that between the human and natural worlds. As a conse... more Cats confound clear distinctions: not least that between the human and natural worlds. As a consequence, they are prime examples of “ferality”: a category of nonhuman subjects who are neither domestic, nor wild, but instead move between those realms. It is argued that that potential for movement informs particular social anxieties and debates that emerge regarding cat hunting behaviors. Drawing on the biopolitical work of Michel Foucault, in conjunction with the ethical paradox of the “predator problem,” it is argued that the ethical indictment of cat predation is best understood as a consequence of cats’ abilities to move across the different regulatory and ethical spaces of the home and the wild. Ferality thus functions as a means by which human ethics are brought to bear on nonhuman nature, and predation is thereby framed as an unnecessary, “unnatural,” and even evil act.
Comedy Studies, 2019
Writing on ‘The New Zealand Sense of Humour’ in his posthumously published book, Tinkering, John ... more Writing on ‘The New Zealand Sense of Humour’ in his posthumously published book, Tinkering, John Clarke describes the comic temperament of his country of birth as ‘laconic, under-stated and self-deprecating’ (2017, 31). In evoking the laconic as a marker of national comic character, Clarke is far from alone: the term is frequently used as an easy, ready-to-hand account of the comic characteristics of both Clarke’s native New Zealand and Australia, where he found his later comic success. Yet the ease with which the term is conjured belies the complexity of the comic forms to which it refers. Literally, ‘laconic’ refers to the use of few words, but it is not always clear how this definition informs laconic humour. This article explores how the laconic might be understood by examining John Clarke’s comedy with particular reference to his Fred Dagg persona. It argues that Dagg’s presentation of the laconic can be productively understood in opposition to Sianne Ngai’s account of the ‘zany’. This comparison brings to light the affective elements of the laconic, seen as character-based comedy premised on the absence of care or attention. Understood through this lens, Dagg’s laconic comedy appears as comic engagement with the emotional repression and affective apathy that has historically been associated with New Zealand provincial communities.
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Books by Nicholas Holm
This collection applies the concepts of ecology and entanglement to address pressing political, social, and cultural issues surrounding human relationships with the nonhuman world in terms of ‘working with nature.’ It asks, are there more or less preferable ways of working with nature? What forms and practices might this work take and how do we distinguish between them? Is the idea of ‘nature’ even sufficient to approach such questions, or do we need to reconsider using the term nature in favour of terms such as environments, ecologies or the broad notion of the non-human world? How might we forge perspectives and enact practices which build resilience and community across species and spaces, constructing relationships with nonhumans which go beyond discourses of pollution, degradation and destruction? Bringing together a range of contributors from across multiple academic disciplines, activists and artists, this book examines how these questions might help us understand and assess the different ways in which humans transform, engage and interact with the nonhuman world.
Articles by Nicholas Holm
In this article I argue that there is a need to more fully theorise ‘dignity’ in order to understand how humour circulates and functions in the public sphere. To that end, I first draw upon Axel Honneth’s political theory of recognition as the basis for an expanded conception of dignity that can understood as the basis for claiming membership of a political community. This model is then tested through a consideration of the physical comedy of ‘pie-ing’ as an example of the elementary conflict between humour and dignity. Finally, the concept of comic indignity is explored as a way to consider which members of a public sphere can afford to suffer slights to their dignity, which cannot, and how this unequal vulnerability to humour might provide the basis for a new model for assessing the politics of humour in the public sphere
This collection applies the concepts of ecology and entanglement to address pressing political, social, and cultural issues surrounding human relationships with the nonhuman world in terms of ‘working with nature.’ It asks, are there more or less preferable ways of working with nature? What forms and practices might this work take and how do we distinguish between them? Is the idea of ‘nature’ even sufficient to approach such questions, or do we need to reconsider using the term nature in favour of terms such as environments, ecologies or the broad notion of the non-human world? How might we forge perspectives and enact practices which build resilience and community across species and spaces, constructing relationships with nonhumans which go beyond discourses of pollution, degradation and destruction? Bringing together a range of contributors from across multiple academic disciplines, activists and artists, this book examines how these questions might help us understand and assess the different ways in which humans transform, engage and interact with the nonhuman world.
In this article I argue that there is a need to more fully theorise ‘dignity’ in order to understand how humour circulates and functions in the public sphere. To that end, I first draw upon Axel Honneth’s political theory of recognition as the basis for an expanded conception of dignity that can understood as the basis for claiming membership of a political community. This model is then tested through a consideration of the physical comedy of ‘pie-ing’ as an example of the elementary conflict between humour and dignity. Finally, the concept of comic indignity is explored as a way to consider which members of a public sphere can afford to suffer slights to their dignity, which cannot, and how this unequal vulnerability to humour might provide the basis for a new model for assessing the politics of humour in the public sphere
My investigation will be grounded in a case study of FX television series The Americans, which I will argue is acutely symptomatic of Marxism’s new status. Currently in its third season, The Americans incorporates aspects of both espionage and domestic drama in its depiction of two deep-cover KGB agents in 1980s America. However, despite this historical specificity, the show remains tellingly vague on the political details and aspirations of the Soviet project. I will argue that this political vacuum at the heart of The Americans is emblematic of Marxism’s new minor cultural status, but that this need not be understood only in terms of Zizek’s pessimistic post-politics. Instead, when understood in tandem with a new generation of students who encounter Marxism with curiosity rather than aversion, Marxism’s condition as minor culture might inform new political projects in the current cultural conjuncture.
This paper will consist of three sections. In the first I will introduce the notion of deadpan and take up Lauren Berlant’s recent work on “public feelings”, in order to consider how deadpan is more than just a matter of facial expression, but is instead better understood more broadly as a comic mode characterised by a flattening of comic affect. In the second section, I will demonstrate what I mean by this broader definition of deadpan with reference to the satiric work of Safran, Waititi and Clarke and argue that this wider definition can allow us to better interpret the cultural and political work of deadpan. In the third section, I will directly address how an appreciation of the role of deadpan can challenge the interpretation of satire as a political form, especially with regards to the celebration of satire as a form of dissent. Given the prevalence of the deadpan mode in Australasian satire, I will then conclude by considering how a reappraisal of deadpan might speak directly to the perceived politics of Australasian humour.
Drawing on the historical and continuing circulation of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” as a central example, this paper examines how the shifting fate of this song can illustrate and illuminate the changing nature of working-class identification, or lack thereof, in popular music. My analysis will be broadly framed in terms of the classical Marxist distinction between a class-in-itself and a class-for-itself: between a working-class that exists by virtue of social position, and one that recognises its commonality and participates in class struggle. Through this lens I will consider the shifting resonance of “Working Class Hero” as expressed in recent covers by American (Pop) Punk band Green Day and the Welsh Alternative Rock band Manic Street Preachers. Particular attention will be paid to changing generic context, and the attendant arrangement of the song in relation to the lyrical context, and how these shifts can be understood in terms of a shifting emphasis between a political identity constituted through cultural critique and an identity understood in terms of affect. Returning to the different understandings of class, I will conclude by suggesting that alternate iterations of the song illustrate different means by which political identities might take affective form, and that this speaks to the wider possibilities of a political popular music in the contemporary moment.
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In this paper, I will argue that engagement with popular utopian texts, such as C&H,is a necessary task of any politics that seeks to consider how utopian thought can infect and inflect the everyday. Though I refute any easy connection of imagination with critical potential, I will assess the ways in which C&H grapples with the legitimacy of alternative epistemologies overlaying the everyday in order to argue that the text presents a utopia of immanent transformation, where the possibility of change is not represented as different and distant, but as emerging in parallel with the material structures and attendant inequalities of lived existence. Building on this analysis, I will then argue that C&H can be, furthermore, taken as an example of how humour – and the relation of humour to misrecognition – can potentially ground productive forms of critical utopian though. In C&H, misrecognition is not a failure of correct knowledge, but rather an epistemological tactic that reveals not only the possibility of change, but also the possible contours of that change in the context of the everyday. Thus, humour here operates not simply as an aesthetic and affect that is utopian in a misguided promise of unbridled freedom and joy, but rather as a means of putting forth a coherent other world.
At the heart of this approach is an attempt to consider aesthetics beyond an individual text: instead, I suggest that we can also speak of a dominant mode(s) at the level of aesthetics. Thus, rather than addressing the differences and distinctions between mediums, genres and texts, I argue for the utility of addressing the shared set of aesthetic rules, logics and qualities that arise out of cultural institutions, infrastructures and industries held in common by Western media culture. I thus argue against Michael Denning’s assertion of the “end of mass culture” and in response take up the language of aesthetics – as it appears in the work of Adorno, Fredric Jameson and other theorists of art and the avant-garde –to describe the common qualities and priorities of contemporary mass culture, such as the relative hierarchies of representational strategies and aesthetic modes. Tying the notion of Mass Aesthetics to Jacques Rancière’s “distribution of the sensible” I will then speak to the political consequences and possibilities of the contemporary Mass Aesthetic, before concluding with a brief sketch of what I consider to be the main characteristics of the contemporary Mass Aesthetic.
In this symposium, we seek to explore what it might mean to conceive of this environmental entanglement in terms of ‘working with nature.’ Are there more or less preferable ways of working with nature? What forms might this work take and how do we distinguish between them? Is the idea of ‘nature’ even sufficient to approach such questions, or do we need to reconsider such a question in terms of environments, ecologies or the broad notion of the non-human world? With a mind to bringing together a range of contributors and stake-holders from across the tertiary sector and the wider community, this symposium seeks to examine how such questions might help us understand and assess the different ways in which humans transform, engage and interact with the nonhuman world.
On a global scale, we are witnessing an increasing concern with the different ways in which human behaviour works to shape nature. From climate change to drives towards sustainable communities and ongoing concerns with waste and pollution, the interaction between human and non-human worlds looks set to be a central concern of the twenty-first century. Such concerns have particular resonance in Aotearoa-New Zealand, where there is a long history of direct and directed human interaction with nature: from the introduction of flora and fauna by European colonists, to contemporary efforts to conserve and re-establish threatened ecosystems and, just as importantly, to the role of farming and other primary industries as cornerstones of the national economy and culture.
We welcome submissions that engage with human-non-human interactions in any number of theoretical, scientific, ecological, sociological, anthropological, textual, historical, political, ethical, or other methods. We would especially like to encourage submissions from artists and activists whose practices converge with notions of the environment and nature.
The 2013 John Douglas Taylor Conference
May 15-17, 2013
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Confirmed Keynotes: Jeremy Gilbert (University of East London), Julie Rak (University of Alberta).
Scholarship and intellectual work are serious business: serious people thinking seriously about serious things. To be serious is to stake a claim to legitimacy, importance and moral and social relevance. In today’s academic environment, it can seem vital to reiterate the seriousness of one’s work in order to secure promotions, positions, resources and even the notice of one’s peers. And yet to declare seriousness is to deem certain topics, attachments, questions and trends unserious, unworthy of attention, rigorous thought and sustained debate. In staking our work around the unexamined metric of seriousness, what is lost? What questions remain unasked?
Despite its centrality to so much of our practice, the notion of seriousness often goes overlooked and under-thought. Indeed, while much effort is expended on the broad task of delimiting the borders of what could, should or ought to be taken seriously, the question of what constitutes seriousness in our current cultural moment does not receive nearly as much attention.
The purpose of the 2013 John Douglas Taylor Conference is to place seriousness front and centre: to think through seriousness, to consider what it is, what it means, what it might hide or efface. What is invested in a marker like seriousness? Is it important that we retain such a measure and if we were to jettison seriousness, what could replace it? This conference will also call attention to the unserious, considering the value and role of unserious topics, debates and modes of understanding our current cultural moment.
In this approach, we are not interested in establishing a hierarchy of serious and non-serious topics, or advocating a new list of topics to be taken seriously (though we are open to self-reflexive forms of this process) but, instead, in investigating how and why the impulse to construct such a typology works. What is the cultural hold seriousness has over us, how do we fight it, or do we even want to? If we seek to ask serious questions, how do we go about determining what these might be, and how do we know they’re serious? How might an engagement with unserious methodologies and topics enrich or threaten existing knowledge?
Given that seriousness isn’t the subject of any large body of existing scholarship, but rather a common and constant concern across all manner of scholarship, we welcome submissions that engage with seriousness in any number of theoretical, sociological, anthropological, textual, historical, political, activist, ethical, artistic or other methods.