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Big Culture

Toward an Aesthetics of Magnitude

Big Culture

Toward an Aesthetics of Magnitude


256 pages | 45 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2025

Architecture: Architecture--Criticism

Media Studies

Philosophy: Aesthetics, General Philosophy

Table of Contents

1. Fear of Bigness

2. Postulates of an Aesthetics of Magnitude
Taxidermy
What Is Big Is Too Big
What Is Big Is Small
Uncompromising Bulk

3. Unsublimity: The Atomic Bomb
The Bomb Is Too Big
Middle Distance
The Sublime
The Bomb Is (Too) Small
Marketable Euphemism

4. Antinomy of an Aesthetics of Magnitude
Could Be Bigger
Size Is Relative
Size Is Absolute

5. Hyperfacticity: The Big-Budget Film
Waste
Monster
Toy
Scale Is a Euphemism About Size

6. Macrophilia: The Bigness of the Body
Microscopical Vision
Our Ravish’d Eyes

7. Racism: The Bigness of Michael Brown
Hulk Hogan
To Cry Like Children
Super-Predator

8. Architecture Without Space: The Skyscraper
Automatic Architecture
Cartographical Vision
The Value of Monotony
Weapon
Barad-dûr

9. Disaster: The Titanic
Live News
Expenditure Spectacle
Monad
Monstrous Day Residue

10. Living with Bigness: Kazuo Shinohara
Against Comfort
Against Space
Against Security
The House Is Bigger Than the City

11. Perception and Illusion
Bigness Before Size
Moon Illusion
Man in the Street

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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