Ugly Feelings is a
thought provoking book in the aesthetics of negative feelings with insightful
reflections upon the social and experiential impact of artistic creations.
Examining the political ambiguous work of some negative emotions, Sianne Ngai
calls attention to certain features of cultural artifacts, of political action,
and of emotional processes, which come to the surface because of the
intersection of interests of this book.

After an introduction where Ngai states the purpose of the book, some of
the underlying distinctions and philosophical problems that surround the
subject of the book, and a short description of the ugly feelings, she begins
with a chapter on Tone.  By tone Ngai
means the overarching feeling of an artifact: something that makes it possible
for a work to be described with a certain affective valence. The main goal of
the chapter is to develop a vocabulary to better analyze tone. Ngai does this
by showing how in The Confident Man: His Masquerade (1857) Melville
creates a "fake" feeling, such that when we see it through the lenses
of the idea of amplification of affect of Silvan Tomkins, it becomes an
illustration of a model of dissonance. One of the interesting points of the
chapter is the verification of how detachment is attained by affect (not from
feeling but by feeling) such that the emotional distance required by the
aesthetic relationship can only be successfully produced affectively.

The next chapter examines Animatedness as one of the ways in which
affect becomes publicly visible. Here Ngai explores the ambiguity of
animatedness showing how it seems to have both an unintentional form (being
moved) and an intentional form (being moved by this or that). Analyzing the
semantic proximity with agitation, Ngai brings out in this chapter questions
about agency in uncovering the emotional background of the concept of political
agitator. The primary focus of Ngai is on the social powerless basing her
analysis on the debate surrounding Fox Television’s animation comedy series The
PJs (1998-2000). 

The third chapter reflects upon Envy, which appears, according to Ngai,
as the best example of a political equivocal feeling.  Through a variety of literature on envy (both from classic
writings such as Freud and Klein as well as recent feminist debates), Ugly
Feelings shows how envy can be used both to explore the value of political
antagonism, and simultaneously mark the limitations of identification. Ngai
shows how envy is never recognized as a valid mode of reacting to social and
cultural disparities, despite its capacity to identify inequalities. In order
to illustrate the political dynamics of envy, Ngai comments the film All
About Eve and the film Single White Female, shifting the analysis
from the typical analysis based on vexed female relationships made to this type
of films, by focusing on desire and identification and how these function
within the logic of envy and emulation.

The following chapter on Irritation analyzes the subtle emotional
process of irritation with the novel Quicksand written by Nella Larsen
in 1928. In the background of this chapter there is a shift of attention from
the aesthetics of emotional excess to the issues of affective illegibility, as
a way to explore the problem of inadequate anger. Ngai’s analysis of the
character Helga Crane interestingly shows how irritation can be both an excess
and a deficiency of anger.  Most interestingly,
Ngai shows at the end of the chapter how irritation can be solicited by a novel
not by sympathy or volunteered passion but in a third manner where a novel
makes us feel what the character feels but not for the reasons the character
feels it.

 The fifth chapter on Anxiety
examines representations of anxiety in works of Herman Melville, Alfred
Hitchcock, and Martin Heidegger. Ngai begins by inquiring how does anxiety come
to acquire a special status in Western culture such that is becomes a distinctive
trait of intellectual inquiry. Ngai points out that the trait of existentialist
philosophy of making anxiety a key aspect of the human condition is a trait of
the emotional space of male intellectuals. Using Hitchcock’s Vertigo,
this chapter draws a picture of anxiety exploring the mechanism of disclosure
of anxiety suggested by Heidegger.

The next chapter explores "Stuplimity," a feeling of a
synthesis of boredom and shock, through the literature of exhausting
repetitions such as Gertrude Stein book The Making of Americans.
Stuplimity appears in contrast with the sublime, offering no transcendence, but
nevertheless playing an interesting role in aesthetic experience by providing
sequences of small resistances and small confrontations. Throughout this chapter
Ngai wants to call our attention for the fact that at the core of the aesthetic
importance of ugly feelings is their tendency to promote meta-responses, that
is feelings about feelings.

The following chapter on Paranoia uses the TV show X-Files to
ground the analysis of how paranoia is in the background of gender
characterization, more specifically at the base of feminist language. This
chapter can be seen as complementary to the chapter on anxiety, where anxiety
is identified as a feeling of the male intellectual world, suggesting that a
sexual polarity of the traditional philosophical dualistic position continues
to be in place.

Finally, the book ends with an Afterword: On Disgust, in which Ngai
points out how it has been demonstrated that desire and disgust are
dialectically conjoined.

Based on writings of
Kant, Adam Smith, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Nussbaum, this last chapter analyzes
the differences and interferences of disgust and contempt, showing how disgust
offers an entirely different set of aesthetics and critical possibilities than
those offered by desire.

The main goal of Ugly Feelings is to reanimate aesthetics by
examining the politically ambiguous work of negative emotions. Though
animatedness, envy, irritation, anxiety, stuplimity, paranoia, and disgust are
all characterized by a weak intentionality and, as Ngai points out, are
explicitly amoral and noncathartic, they nevertheless draw us
closer to the domain of political theory by expressing political commitments.
While reading Ugly Feelings one feels the need to be acquainted or
become acquainted with the works of art that serve as the background for its
insightful reflections. Nevertheless, the invisible powerful impact of small,
and little ugly feelings becomes visible for every reader.

© 2005 Dina Mendonça

Dina
Mendonça is a Postdoctoral Fellow of Fundação para a Ciência e a
Tecnologia, Portugal, at the Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem in
the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Working in a research program on
"Pragmatic Analysis of Emotion." This research, of Deweyan
inspiration, aims at elaborating a critical interpretation of the philosophy of
emotions clarifying: on the one hand, (1) the different methodological
approaches to emotions; on the other hand, (2) the topics that surround
reflection upon emotion. Among other things, the project aims at the production
of a commented bibliography and a research database on philosophy of emotion.

Categories: Philosophical