A 21st century Kant

Lucy was Zany

Emmanuel Kant had two aesthetic categories: The sublime and the beautiful. But what are some of the new aesthetic categories of our times? Sianne Ngai identifies these to be "Zany", "Cute" and "Interesting" in his new book Our Aesthetic Categories.

The book is 

[...] About aesthetic judgments: an inquiry into the terms and origins of taste. How do we decide what we feel about the latest Chantal Akerman film or the fiction of Javier Marías, an Alexander McQueen ball-gown or an episode of Breaking Bad? How do we translate into language the sensations of pleasure and displeasure inspired by daily experience — and particularly our experience of art? What kind of conversation are we really having when we say “The Books make beautiful music!” or “The view out the window was picturesque?"

 Next time when I offer judgment on something I see, hear or smell, I'll be sure not to break out into a "That's profound/sublime!" mode.

However, the word "interesting" seems to have lost specificity in my eyes. I've often heard people judge something as "interesting" because they fear a judgmental void. "Interesting" is a placeholder for responses ranging from "vague", "boring" to "abstruse", and "stupid" among others.

Ngai is an English Professor at Stanford University; his book is aimed more at addressing certain anachronistic tendencies in the culture of academia. Professors and scholars continue to subscribe to the aesthetic categories devised by Kant during the time of European Enlightenment. Ngai thinks it's time the academic categories got a little infused by categories from popular culture.