Description
Book SynopsisSince the birth of modernity, Western thought has been at war with clichés. The association of philosophical and cultural integrity with originality, and the corresponding need for invention and novelty, has been a distinct concern of a whole spectrum of ideas and movements, from Nietzsche’s polemics against the ‘herd’, the ‘shock of the new’ of the artistic avant-garde, the Frankfurt School’s critique of mass culture, to Orwell’s defence of political dialogue from ‘dying metaphors’.
This book is the first examination of the cliché as a philosophical concept. Challenging the idea that clichés are lazy or spurious opposites to genuine thinking, it instead locates them as a dynamic and contestable boundary between ‘thought’ and ‘non-thought’. The book unpacks the constituent phenomena of clichés – repetition, circulation, the readymade, same-ness – through readings of ‘anti-philosophical’ thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Paulhan, de Certeau, Derrida, Sloterdijk, Badiou and Groys. In doing so, the book critically articulates the techniques and technologies through which the boundary between ‘thought’ and ‘non-thought’ is formed in modern Western philosophy.
Rejecting the idea that clichés should be dismissed out of hand on normative frameworks of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ thinking, or ‘new’ and ‘old’ ideas, it instead interrogates the material, cultural and archival ground on which these frameworks are built.
Table of ContentsPrologue
CHAPTER ONE: THE MEANING OF CLICHÉS
CHAPTER TWO: DEAD SPACES: ARENDT, ORWELL AND THE MORBIDITY OF POLITICAL CLICHÉS
CHAPTER THREE: CYNICAL MODERNITY FROM NIETZSCHE TO SLOTERDIJK
CHAPTER FOUR: SAYING IT WITH FLOWERS: JEAN PAULHAN’S INAPPROPRIATE METAPHORS
CHAPTER FIVE: THE SHOCK OF THE SAME: BORIS GROYS AND THE METANOIA OF THE CLICHÉ
CHAPTER SIX: ON THE PROBLEM OF SAYING SOMETHING NEW: KIERKEGAARD’S ARCHETYPES, MCLUHAN’S CLICHÉS
CHAPTER SEVEN: STOCK IMAGES OF MADNESS: RHETORIC AND CLICHÉ IN VIDEO GAMES
CHAPTER EIGHT: “THIS WILL ALL MAKE SENSE WHEN I AM OLDER”: REBOOTING CLICHÉS
CHAPTER NINE: GATEKEEPING THE “NOISE”: EXPERTISE, OPEN-MINDEDNESS AND PUBLIC DEBATE
Bibliography
