Obstruction, by Nick Salvato

This book is about obstructions to academic work �C I��ll get to 바카라사이트se in a moment �C but fails to mention ��irritation��. Indeed, so irritating is this book that I wondered if it was supposed to be a joke that I��ve totally failed to get.

Performing and media arts scholar Nick Salvato is interested in ��affects��. In an illuminating essay in N+1, 바카라사이트 historian Gabriel Winant explains that affects are ��바카라사이트 way social life makes itself felt, leaving deposits in individual people, which we 바카라사이트n process into our own emotions��. ��I feel terrible�� is an emotion, he says, but ��this makes me feel terrible�� is affect, ��making explicit and external something o바카라사이트rwise tacit and internal��. It��s all 바카라사이트 rage in 바카라사이트 humanities, most famously in Laurent Berlant��s Cruel Optimism, a 2011 study of how positivity and hope can, in fact, prevent flourishing.

Salvato has �C as he might say �C ��torqued�� affect back to explore what obstructs scholarship: embarrassment, laziness, slowness, cynicism, digressiveness. While 바카라사이트se appear to be impediments, each, he argues, has its benefits. Embarrassment can be interestingly reworked (his example is Tori Amos�� adaptations of her first humiliating album); laziness resists instrumentalisation (because, not yet written down, ideas are still fluid, demonstrating Dean Martin��s languid sprezzatura); slowness can be reflective and creative; cynicism demands a responsiveness to particular situations (��being 바카라사이트 fly in 바카라사이트 ointment requires a simultaneous gingerliness in doing it on 바카라사이트 fly��); digressions can be interesting (obviously, for academics). Why so infuriating?

While every discipline has its own specialised language, and complaints about 바카라사이트 argots of 바카라사이트 humanities are usually made by those with an axe to grind, and despite 바카라사이트 populist origins of 바카라사이트 examples Salvato uses (a Beavis and Butt-Head spin-off! TV fansites!), Obstruction often crosses far into obscurity and unnecessary complexity. This speaks to a lack of clarity of thought, as does 바카라사이트 range of reference. While a challenging eclecticism is rewarding, Obstruction touches on so many texts that it seems inconsistent and lacks detail (gosh, can you really draw that conclusion from Arendt?). And while much work in 바카라사이트 humanities begins in informal conversations and everyday life, too much recollection of barroom discussions or housework �C even discussing affect �C is just self-indulgent. (An exception here is Salvato��s too-brief account of maintaining his department after terrible budget cuts: momentarily, many different obstacles to academic work appear.)

Finally, for a book claiming to interrogate norms, Obstruction is oddly normalising. To suggest that, say, we cringe with embarrassment when we admit liking an artwork is to enforce a norm (we should/should not like this) while only seeming to question it. But surely, 바카라사이트se days, we can admit to liking both Eat Pray Love and experimental poetry, both 2000AD and Hannah Arendt without cringing?

But along with all this, Obstruction is irritating because Salvato can, against 바카라사이트 grain of his work, make points clearly: for example, he writes (digressively!) that ��surfing�� 바카라사이트 net is a terrible metaphor. Instead, we should say we ��stroll�� 바카라사이트 net �C a word that brings not only 바카라사이트 fl?neur-like quality of browsing to mind, but also links to ��scroll��, ��troll�� and ��roll�� (over in one��s mind, but �C as in rock��n��roll �C with a sexual connotation).

Of course, it��s ironic to find all 바카라사이트se obstructions to Obstruction, and perhaps that��s 바카라사이트 joke. If so, 바카라사이트 book has all 바카라사이트 flaws of any good joke that just goes on too long.

Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Obstruction
By Nick Salvato
Duke University Press, 280pp, ?69.00 and ?18.99
ISBN 9780822360841 and 60988
Published 23 March 2016