{"product_id":"hold-it-against-me-9780822353133","title":"Hold It Against Me","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExamining the relationship between emotional intensity and difficulty in works of avant-garde art, Jennifer Doyle seeks to develop a critical language for understanding affectively charged contemporary art.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Jennifer Doyle’s \u003ci\u003eHold It Against Me\u003c\/i\u003e offers us a powerful and challenging new voice. The difficulty she describes emerges in work that turns to face us. . . .Doyle has opened up a critical and much needed space for this work and these experiences. She demands that we consider the political and historical stakes in ourselves, to embrace what is intimate and fraught — and that is no easy feat.” -- Laura Fried * Los Angeles Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e“Doyle blends scholarly critique with personal experience, producing a deep and broad analysis which is as much a critique of contemporary art criticism as contemporary art.” * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003e“This treatise argues that emotion makes artworks harder, more interesting, more difficult, and yet ultimately more rewarding for their complexity. Though aimed at scholars of performance and visual culture, this densely complex book will reward tenacious readers interested in understanding some of the most moving (and difficult) contemporary art of our time.\" -- Toro Castaño * Library Journal *\u003cbr\u003e“In this rich, thought-provoking, and very readable work of scholarship, Doyle poses questions about works of art that cannot be easily described, that bring complicated personal and political subject matter to the fore, and that often evoke strong emotional reactions in the audiences that view them.” -- Alexis Clements * Hyperallergic *\u003cbr\u003e\"Doyle’s book is both an endorsement for and an example of what might happen once we venture away from the assurance of that cool scholarly detachment and into the less transparent but perhaps more revealing terrain of affective response. What Doyle discovers in that realm of feelings is not only personal sentiment, but also a complex site where ideology, aesthetics, social convention, and political possibility intersect.\"  -- Catherine Zuromskis * Postmodern Culture *\u003cbr\u003e“Doyle captures unnerving moments of unease, anxiety, even extreme pain. These images and Doyle’s compelling discussion of their difficulty stay with the reader long after closing the book’s covers. Perhaps that is what is so successful about Doyle’s study. While the actual works explored are many of them fleeting performances, or done by artists who have by now succumbed to the AIDS virus, or are representations of the dead, they persist. They fight. They move us.” -- Sarah E. Cornish * Rocky Mountain Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePreface ix\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments xxi\u003cbr\u003e I. Introducing Difficulty 1\u003cbr\u003e Hard Feelings 5\u003cbr\u003e Patrolling the Border between Art and Politics 9\u003cbr\u003e Vocabulary Shift: From Controversy to Difficulty 15\u003cbr\u003e Difficulty's Audience 21\u003cbr\u003e 2. Three Case Studies in Difficulty and the Problem of Affect 28\u003cbr\u003e A Blank: Aliza Shvarts, \u003ci\u003eUntitled\u003c\/i\u003e (2008) 28\u003cbr\u003e Theater of Cruelty: Thomas Eakins, \u003ci\u003eThe Gross Clinic\u003c\/i\u003e (1875) 39\u003cbr\u003e Touchy Subjects: Ron Athey, \u003ci\u003eIncorruptible Flesh: Dissociative Sparkle\u003c\/i\u003e (2006) 49\u003cbr\u003e 3. Thinking Feeling: Criticism and Emotion 69\u003cbr\u003e What Happened to Feeling? 69\u003cbr\u003e The Difficulty of Sentimentality: Franko B's \u003ci\u003eI Miss You!\u003c\/i\u003e (2003) 73\u003cbr\u003e The Strange Theatricality of Tears: Nao Bustamante's \u003ci\u003eNeapolitan\u003c\/i\u003e (2009) 83\u003cbr\u003e Relational Aesthetics and Affective Labor 89\u003cbr\u003e 4. Feeling Overdetermined: Identity, Emotion, and History 94\u003cbr\u003e The Difficulty of Identity 94\u003cbr\u003e James Luna's \u003ci\u003e The History of the Luiseño People (Christmas, La Jolla Reservation 1990)\u003c\/i\u003e (1990–1996, 2009) 98\u003cbr\u003e Difficulty and Ideologies of Emotion 106\u003cbr\u003e Carrie Mae Weems's \u003ci\u003eFrom Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried\u003c\/i\u003e (1995–1996) 112\u003cbr\u003e Conclusion 126\u003cbr\u003e David Wojnarowicz's \u003ci\u003eUntitled (Hujar Dead)\u003c\/i\u003e (1988–1989) 126\u003cbr\u003e Notes 147\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography 183\u003cbr\u003e Index 193","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49371775205719,"sku":"9780822353133","price":18.89,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780822353133.jpg?v=1730154507","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/hold-it-against-me-9780822353133","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}