MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | HYPERBOLE: SENSE, SENSATION, SPECTACLE

The Gimmick as Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form

April 29 @ 6 P.M.
Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center

Using examples from philosophy, literature, and anthropology, this talk explores the gimmick as a form that simultaneously repels and attracts us, and the judgment by which we express this ambivalent mixture of feelings. As both a compromised aesthetic form and an equivocal aesthetic judgment stemming from the recognition of interlinked contradictions surrounding labor, time, and value, the gimmick offers us a surprisingly rich place to think about capitalist aesthetics and the intertwining of technique and enchantment therein.