Since the birth of modernity, Western thought has been at war with cliches. The association of philosophical and cultural integrity with originality, and the corresponding need for invention and novelty, has been a distinct concern of a whole spectrum of ideas and movements, from Nietzsche's polemics against the 'herd', the 'shock of the new' of the artistic avant-garde, the Frankfurt School's critique of mass culture, to Orwell's defence of political dialogue from 'dying metaphors'. This book is the first examination of the cliche as a philosophical concept. Challenging the idea that cliches are lazy or spurious opposites to genuine thinking, it instead locates them as a dynamic and contestable boundary between 'thought' and 'non-thought'. The book unpacks the constituent phenomena of cliches - repetition, circulation, the readymade, same-ness - through readings of 'anti-philosophical' thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Paulhan, de Certeau, Derrida, Sloterdijk, Badiou and Groys. In doing so, the book critically articulates the techniques and technologies through which the boundary between 'thought' and 'non-thought' is formed in modern Western philosophy. Rejecting the idea that cliches should be dismissed out of hand on normative frameworks of 'good' and 'bad' thinking, or 'new' and 'old' ideas, it instead interrogates the material, cultural and archival ground on which these frameworks are built.
Thomas Grimwood is senior research fellow at the University of Cumbria. He has published on a broad range of topics within the field of cultural hermeneutics, from Nietzschean misogyny to medieval anorexia, and his research has a particular focus on representations of ambiguity within the act of interpretation. He is the author of two books: Irony, Misogyny and Interpretation, and Key Debates in Social Work and Philosophy.
Prologue CHAPTER ONE: THE MEANING OF CLICHES CHAPTER TWO: DEAD SPACES: ARENDT, ORWELL AND THE MORBIDITY OF POLITICAL CLICHESCHAPTER THREE: CYNICAL MODERNITY FROM NIETZSCHE TO SLOTERDIJK CHAPTER FOUR: SAYING IT WITH FLOWERS: JEAN PAULHAN'S INAPPROPRIATE METAPHORS CHAPTER FIVE: THE SHOCK OF THE SAME: BORIS GROYS AND THE METANOIA OF THE CLICHE CHAPTER SIX: ON THE PROBLEM OF SAYING SOMETHING NEW: KIERKEGAARD'S ARCHETYPES, MCLUHAN'S CLICHES CHAPTER SEVEN: STOCK IMAGES OF MADNESS: RHETORIC AND CLICHE IN VIDEO GAMES CHAPTER EIGHT: "THIS WILL ALL MAKE SENSE WHEN I AM OLDER": REBOOTING CLICHES CHAPTER NINE: GATEKEEPING THE "NOISE": EXPERTISE, OPEN-MINDEDNESS AND PUBLIC DEBATE Bibliography
