The Shock of the Same: An Anti-Philosophy of Clichés (Futures of the Archive)

Since 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. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements Prologue: Facing Clichés The Boy with the Cliché on His Face The Big Idea Mere Typologies Facing the Front Notes Chapter 1: The Meaning of Clichés Sites of Displacement The Anti-Philosophy of the Cliché The Case of the Commonplace Into the Archive Undead Spaces Notes Chapter 2: Dead Spaces: Arendt, Orwell and the Morbidity of Political Clichés Arendt: Banality, Evil and Aesthetics Orwell: Making Language Matter Eichmann’s Last Cliché ‘The Process Is Reversible’ The Undead Cliché Notes Chapter 3: Cynical Modernity from Nietzsche to Sloterdijk A History of Forgetting The Egyptian Spectacle Nietzsche’s Clichés Repetition Reconsidered Cynical Reason Weaponizing Banality Notes Chapter 4: Saying It with Flowers: Jean Paulhan’s Inappropriate Metaphors Saying It with Flowers Civic Duties Metaphor and Usury Radical Sacrifice Lest We Forget... Notes Chapter 5: The Shock of the Same: Boris Groys and the Metanoia of the Cliché  On the New Archival Logic and the Hegemony of Critique Difference with a Difference ‘The Most Profound Things Are Inexpressible’ Afterthought: the Cliché as Anti-archive Notes Chapter 6: On the Problem of Saying Something New: Kierkegaard’s Archetypes, McLuhan’s Clichés Difference and the New Archival Impulses and Concerns for Propriety The Banal Art of Retrieval Quidam’s Guilt/Non-guilt Cliché on the Threshold Notes Chapter 7: Stock Images of Madness: Rhetoric and Cliché in Video Games The Limits of Insanity Rhetorics of Suffering and Darkness: monstrous doubles and reaching tentacles Immersion, Representation and Commonplace Procedures Heroism Re-objectified Notes Chapter 8: ‘This Will All Make Sense When I Am Older’: Rebooting Clichés A Crisis of Infinite Reboots Bringing the Past into the Problematic Present The Dark Knight Returns, Again Disavowal, Forgetting and Remembering Again A Return to Narrative Notes Chapter 9: Gatekeeping the ‘Noise’: Expertise, Open-Mindedness and Public Debate We Have Had Enough of Having Enough of Experts Conflict and Resonance Kant’s Archaic Idyll The Procedures of Expertise Noisy Clichés Notes Bibliography Index "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'"-- Provided by publisher