Feast of Excess: A Cultural History of the New Sensibility
George Cotkin
Abstract
This book is a cultural history of the New Sensibility in America. The New Sensibility was about excess, pushing cultural boundaries, taking chances, going to extremes. Such excess could take two tendencies: a bare-bones minimalism, or a riotous maximalism. The common focus was on sexual liberation, madness, violence, spontaneity, confession, and undermining divisions between high and low culture and between performer and audience. The vignette organization of succinct chapters allows a wide range of cultural creators to be examined within the context of their biographies and the historical mo ... More
This book is a cultural history of the New Sensibility in America. The New Sensibility was about excess, pushing cultural boundaries, taking chances, going to extremes. Such excess could take two tendencies: a bare-bones minimalism, or a riotous maximalism. The common focus was on sexual liberation, madness, violence, spontaneity, confession, and undermining divisions between high and low culture and between performer and audience. The vignette organization of succinct chapters allows a wide range of cultural creators to be examined within the context of their biographies and the historical moment when they were realizing works (in art, photography, literature, music, film, and performance) exemplary of the New Sensibility. Each chapter focuses on a single year, beginning in 1952 and concluding in 1974. The book demonstrates how the New Sensibility is a valuable way to conceptualize the history of postwar American culture, bringing together many different forms of cultural expression. Along the way it focuses on the power and problems of the New Sensibility, concluding that while experimentation and excess is often welcome, enduring art emerges when excess is informed by a sense of limit. The New Sensibility, fresh in the years examined in this book, remains our central cultural configuration to this day, both constrained by and resistant to our conformist and co-opting culture.
Keywords:
the New sensibility,
literature,
art,
photography,
American culture,
music,
John Cage,
Susan Sontag,
American history,
American studies
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190218478 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190218478.001.0001 |
