a weighted reeling present

"This book tries to slow the quick jump to representational thinking and evaluative critique long enough to find ways of approaching the complex and uncertain objects that fascinate because they literally hit us or exert a pull on us. My effort here is not to finally 'know' them--to collect them into a good enough story of what's going on--but to fashion some form of address that is adequate to their form....In this book I am trying to create a contact zone for analysis."

Those sentences center the introduction of Kathleen Stewart's Ordinary Affects. (2007) Ostensibly a cryptic bundle of strangely engaging short stories, OA tells us about TVs, shopping malls, trips to 7-11, quiet drunks and the plastic talking owl that appeared at a Laurie Anderson concert.

I won't try to tell what it's about, much less what it means, even if I think I know. I will say that I am interested in storytelling as a genre, and I'm interested in learning about storytelling by telling stories. I'll also tell you that Stewart's stories are to be read in concert with several rock star theorists including Lauren Berlant, D&G, Raymond Williams, Roland Barthes, and Nigel Thrift.

There we have two reasons for me to read this book. The third is its preoccupation with the Ordinary, which I feel free to lump loosely with the Everyday, which happens all the time. Soon I'll have to make explicit the points of contact between Everyday Life and the object of my research (my field), or admit that I'm only called to study EL because I find the object of my research to be hopelessly boring, banal, and devoid of scholarly sex appeal.