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oapen-20.500.12657-254412022-07-21T14:40:03Z The Retro-Futurism of Cuteness Boyle, Jen Kao, Wan-Chuan cuteness William Shakespeare Renaissance literature Bollywood Second Life cultural studies bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies::DS Literature: history & criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBD Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 Is it possible to conceive of a Hello Kitty Middle Ages or a Tickle Me Elmo Renaissance? The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first reference to “cute” in the sense of “attractive, pretty, charming” to 1834. More recently, Sianne Ngai has offered a critical overview of the cuteness of the twentieth-century avant-garde within the context of consumer culture. But if cuteness can get under the skin, what kinds of surfaces does it best infiltrate, particularly in the framework of historical forms, events, and objects that traditionally have been read as emergences around “big” aesthetics of formal symmetries, high affects, and resemblances? The Retrofuturism of Cuteness seeks to undo the temporal strictures surrounding aesthetic and affective categories, to displace a strict focus on commodification and cuteness, and to interrogate how cuteness as a minor aesthetics can refocus our perceptions and readings of both premodern and modern media, literature, and culture. Taking seriously the retro and the futuristic temporalities of cuteness, this volume puts in conversation projects that have unearthed remnants of a “cult of cute”—positioned historically and critically in between transitions into secularization, capitalist frameworks of commodification, and the enchantment of objects—and those that have investigated the uncanny haunting of earlier aesthetics in future-oriented modes of cuteness. 2019-03-26 23:55 2020-01-23 14:09:07 2020-04-01T10:39:32Z 2020-04-01T10:39:32Z 2017 book 1004654 OCN: 1048123028 9781947447295 9781947447288 http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25441 eng application/pdf Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International 1004654.pdf punctum books 10.21983/P3.0188.1.00 10.21983/P3.0188.1.00 979dc044-00ee-4ea2-affc-b08c5bd42d13 9781947447295 9781947447288 ScholarLed 268 Brooklyn, NY open access
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Is it possible to conceive of a Hello Kitty Middle Ages or a Tickle Me Elmo Renaissance? The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first reference to “cute” in the sense of “attractive, pretty, charming” to 1834. More recently, Sianne Ngai has offered a critical overview of the cuteness of the twentieth-century avant-garde within the context of consumer culture. But if cuteness can get under the skin, what kinds of surfaces does it best infiltrate, particularly in the framework of historical forms, events, and objects that traditionally have been read as emergences around “big” aesthetics of formal symmetries, high affects, and resemblances? The Retrofuturism of Cuteness seeks to undo the temporal strictures surrounding aesthetic and affective categories, to displace a strict focus on commodification and cuteness, and to interrogate how cuteness as a minor aesthetics can refocus our perceptions and readings of both premodern and modern media, literature, and culture. Taking seriously the retro and the futuristic temporalities of cuteness, this volume puts in conversation projects that have unearthed remnants of a “cult of cute”—positioned historically and critically in between transitions into secularization, capitalist frameworks of commodification, and the enchantment of objects—and those that have investigated the uncanny haunting of earlier aesthetics in future-oriented modes of cuteness.
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