Spoiler Alert

A Critical Guide

Aaron Jaffe

Concurrent with the compulsory connectivity of the digital age is the rise of the spoiler. The inevitability of information has changed the critical quality of modernity, leaving us with acute vertigo—a feeling that nothing new is left out there. Encompassing memes and trigger warnings, Vilém Flusser and Thomas Pynchon, Spoiler Alert wrangles with the state of surprise in posthistorical times. Aaron Jaffe delivers a timely corrective to postcritical modes of reading that demonstrates the dangers of forfeiting critical suspicion.

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Background photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

Metadata

rights
Portions of this book were published in “There Is as Yet Insufficient Data for a Meaningful Answer: Information at the Literary Limit,” The Year’s Work in the Oddball Archive, ed. Jonathan Eburne and Judith Roof (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016); “Pop Culture,” The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, ed. Jeffrey R. Di Leo (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018); and “Updating as Modernity; or, Impermanent Test Dept.,” Thresholds, http://openthresholds.org/.

Copyright 2019 by Aaron Jaffe

edition
1
isbn
978-1-4529-6450-8
publisher
University of Minnesota Press
publisher place
Minneapolis, MN
restrictions
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
rights holder
Aaron Jaffe
rights territory
World
series number
37
series title
Forerunners: Ideas First
version
1.0
doi
https://doi.org/10.5749/9781452964508