Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. Not It, or, The Abject Objection / Maggie Hennefeld and Nicholas Sammond 1
1. The Politics of Abjection / Sylvère Lotringer 33
Part I. Abject Performances: Subjectivity, Identity, Individuality
2. Popular Abjection and Gendered Embodiment in South Korean Film Comedy / Michelle Cho 43
3. Precarious-Girl Comedy: Issa Rae, Lena Dunham, and Abjection Aesthetics / Rebecca Wanzo 64
4. Abject Feminism, Grotesque Comedy, and Apocalyptic Laughter on Inside Amy Schumer / Maggie Hennefeld 86
Part II. Abject Bodies: Humans, Animals, Objects
5. The Animal and the Animalistic: China's Late 1950s Socialist Satirical Comedy / Yiman Wang 115
6. Anticolonial Folly and the Reversals of Repatriation / Rijuta Mehta 140
7. Between Technology and Toy: The Talking Doll as Abject Artifact / Meredith A. Bak 164
8. Absolute Dismemberment: The Burlesque Natural History of Georges Bataille / James Leo Cahill 185
9. Why, an Abject Art / Mark Mulroney 208
Part III. Abject Aesthetics: Structure, Form, System
10. A Matter of Fluids: EC Comics and the Vernacular Abject / Nicholas Sammond 217
11. Spit * Light * Spunk: Larry Clark, an Aesthetic of Frankness / Eugenie Brinkema 243
12. A Series of Ugly Feelings: Fabulation and Abjection in Shōjo Manga / Thomas Lamarre 268
13. Powers of Comedy, or, The Abject Dialectics of Louie / Rob King 291
Contributors 321
Index