John P. Birkelund Lecture

Inhabiting Error: From “Last Christmas” to “Senior’s Last Hour”

To linger in error is to run the risk of deepening error, expanding the reach of its domain. This is especially the case in a world where key social truths are hidden by the forms in which they are expressed, making error an unavoidable part of everyday perception. Yet when contradiction is a real part of the world, as Hegel thought it was, and not a mere tendency in reason, error must be lived out in order to be fully understood. In this talk, cultural theorist Sianne Ngai jumps into this multilayered socio-epistemological dilemma from the springboard of—what else?—a pop song by Wham! and a re-reading of Marx’s Capital.