I have a piece up at The Guardian to help you prepare for your New Year’s Eve party tonight.
I have a piece up at The Guardian to help you prepare for your New Year’s Eve party tonight.
My friend Adam Robinson has reviewed Awkwardness at HTMLGIANT.
Ian Bogost has reviewed Awkwardness, combining a generally positive assessment with some fair criticisms. Also, it turns out that I am, awkwardly enough, somewhat object-oriented in the book.
I noticed today that Amazon.co.uk was encouraging customers to purchase Awkwardness together with a couple of the speculative realism books in the Zero series. That may seem ironic, given my criticism of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), but it reflects the deeper ambition of Awkwardness. It may look like a bizarre work of pop culture criticism that reads Ricky Gervais through Heidegger and St. Paul through Larry David, but in reality it is the opening salvo for a major new philosophical movement I call Abject-Oriented Ontology (or AOO, pronounced “owww…”), Abject-Oriented Ontology insists that we must start philosophizing from what other philosophies reject. All philosophy up until the present day has made a mistake that I just noticed: it has focused on things that are recognized as good, using them as the starting point for explaining bad things.
At its most extreme, it has dismissed the non-good as essentially non-existent, a kind of gap left by the failure to be good. (The joke I’m trying to make here is that Levi uses a buttload of italics in all his posts. I feel I’ve made my point sufficiently, and I’m tired of inserting tags.) What AOO argues is that we need to start from that which we would normally avoid or discount — to start from awkwardness rather than successful social performances, for instance, or start from fictional characters rather than real people. In the sequel to Awkwardness, I plan to continue in this trajectory by investigating sociopathic characters, with a vague plan to round out the trilogy with a volume on creepiness.
Having thoroughly analyzed bad human character traits as the key to understanding humanity, I can then move on to — I don’t know, something. I also don’t know how much of this post is a joke, so that should be fun for everyone.
One of the main points of my soon-to-be international mega-bestseller Awkwardness is that awkwardness spreads. If you witness an awkward situation, even one you’re not directly involved in, you feel awkward as well.
One of the main points of much contemporary theology is that God has genuine compassion for human beings, rather than being totally impassible.
In the course of our daily IM session today, Brad suggested these two insights can be combined, that the Supreme Being who watches over all of us is constantly paralyzed by the force of human awkwardness. It’s bad enough to watch one guy get shot down hitting on a woman — how about millions, every hour of every day? What if you spent all eternity watching jokes fall flat, watching grown children unable to let go of childhood sleights while visiting their parents for the holidays, watching people panic as they realize that their transaction is over-complicated and hundreds of people behind them in line are seething with hatred?
In that case, the answer to the problem of evil is that God can’t do anything, as he’s locked into a permanent cringe.
One could also try a trinitarian interpretation of the awkwardness of God: the Son is the Wince of God, and the Holy Spirit is the breath he sharply inhales.
The international mega-hit Awkwardness is available from Book Depository, with free global shipping.
This offer makes Amazon’s US site, which “usually” dispatches the book in one to three months and makes you pay for shipping, look like a bunch of amateurs.
Like all the other books in the Zer0 series, Awkwardness makes an excellent stocking stuffer. Or for the Sex and the City or Sarah Palin fan in your life, you might try Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman. Does your uncle wonder if there’s an alternative to capitalist realism? Mark Fisher is your man! And that’s just the beginning… Surely there has never been a better year to stock stuffings with various attempts to renew the role of the public intellectual.
UPDATE: Redeem your stocking as well! Book Depository currently has a bigger discount on Politics of Redemption than either Amazon site, again with free global shipping. Send it to your aunt in New Zealand! Surprise Vladmir Putin!
Or rather, remember yesterday’s date — because that was the date on which Awkwardness was available for purchase to my fellow Americans.
I received my author copies on Thursday, and it looks pretty good to me. It’s a pocket-sized volume, perfect for the train, the back of the toilet, or just a lazy afternoon. As Zizek so accurately points out in his blurb on the back, I manage to do for awkwardness what Heidegger did for anxiety — but in a much more leisurely and accessible way. I’m also not a Nazi, so you can throw that on the scales as well.
I encourage all of you to purchase, read, and treasure this book forever, not only so that I can make some money and have a shot at getting interviewed by a local NPR affiliate, but also so that I can secure a contract to write two further books on popular culture that I have projected: The Love of Sociopaths and Fun: A Critique.
Though they may soon be unable to get an education in the humanities, British subjects can console themselves that they are now able to purchase my book Awkwardness. Currently only 2 copies remain.
My long-awaited magnum opus on the philosophy of awkwardness is now available for pre-order on Amazon, both .com and .co.uk. It’s cheap at $12.95, and if you pre-order, Amazon will only charge you the lowest price that the book reaches between now and the release date. You literally cannot lose. UPDATE: Or you could order for a much cheaper price from Book Depository! Thanks, Sarah.
Promotional material below the fold: Read the rest of this entry »
Speaking of book covers, here is the latest version of the cover from my forthcoming oeuvre, Awkwardness: An Essay.
It is currently scheduled to be released in fall of 2010. In the meantime, everyone should plan to make a pilgrimage to Kalamazoo College, where I will be giving a public lecture based on the book on March 3.
Adam’s shared items Brad’s shared items
Adam Kotsko
Anthony Paul Smith
Brad Johnson
Thomas J. J. Altizer
dominicfox
JD
Nate Kerr
danbarber
thomaslynch
Alex
Thomas J Bridges
clayton crockett
Andy
spinozanetwork
lissamccullough
Ryan Krahn
Christopher Rodkey
jms
Robert Minto
Dan
voyou