Kitsch!: Cultural Politics and Taste

Ruth Holliday

ISBN 10: 0719066166 / ISBN 13: 9780719066160

Published by Manchester University Press, 2012

About this Item

2012. 1st Edition. Paperback. From bottle gardens, batman and the bachelor pad to garden gnomes and monogamy spray, this book uses a range of objects to explore the meanings and uses of kitsch. An accessible, comprehensive introduction for students and informed readers, it adds to debates on taste in cultural theory and sociology and provides a review of the literature. Num Pages: 256 pages, 36 black & white illustrations, 5 colour illustrations. BIC Classification: ACXJ; JFCA; JHB. Category: (G) General (US: Trade); (P) Professional & Vocational; (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 215 x 141 x 16. Weight in Grams: 366. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780719066160

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Kitsch!: Cultural Politics and Taste
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719066166
• ISBN 13: 9780719066160
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

From bottle gardens, the bachelor pad and Batman to designer gnomes and monogamy spray, this book uses a diverse range of objects to explore the changing significance of kitsch. With its unique approach to its subject, Kitsch! Cultural politics and taste promises to advance debates in cultural studies and sociology around taste, while providing an invaluable introduction for students and interested readers.

Kitsch! examines how the idea of kitsch is mobilised - progressively, as bad taste, as camp and as cool - to inform notions of identity and sensibility. Where most studies proceed from the kitsch object, this book takes the moment of aesthetic judgement as its starting point and attempts to identify the ideological work performed by the category itself. The book poses the strongest challenge to those who argue that taste is democratised in contemporary culture, offering ample evidence that judgements of taste have shifted ground rather than relaxed.

Above all, the story of kitsch proposed by the authors is intended to disturb kitsch's reputation as the source of a ready-made sensibility and politics. Kitsch has a history and not, as it has been supposed, an essence and is consequently the site of love, hate, joy, exasperation, irony, nausea and all of the twisted possibilities between.

About the Authors

Ruth Holliday is Professor of Gender and Culture in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Leeds

Tracey Potts is Lecturer in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham