Discredit

by Sianne Ngai

Of Sianne Ngai's debut chapbook of poetry, she wrote: "The logics of ownership and possession are used in the world not only to authorize my bank account and rental agreement, but my authority to speak or write. (It is said that the mad have "lost possession" of themselves). This is what the poem disavows and resists. Hence 'discredit': lack of credit in the financial sense, and lack of credibility, authorial authority, the 'personal voice.' Also loss of reputation, disgrace. Doubt. The refusal to accept something as true or accurate. To cause disbelief in the authority of something."

Genres: Poetry

32 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1997

About the author

Sianne Ngai is Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Ugly Feelings and Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, winner of the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize. Her work has been translated into multiple languages, and she has received fellowships from the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin and the American Council of Learned Societies.