Big Culture

Toward an Aesthetics of Magnitude

David Wittenberg

$190.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

University of Chicago Press
05 September 2025

Theory of art; Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology; Philosophy: aesthetics

A philosophical exploration of our relationship to large objects and their outsized psychological effects.

Big Culture asks a simple question: why do big things give us big feelings? Skyscrapers, disasters, and other large phenomena can elicit fear, attraction, and awe. David Wittenberg argues that these feelings cannot be explained through objects' size alone. Instead, he contends that an encounter with bigness is a primal, even violent sensation like little else that we experience in our well-proportioned adult lives.

Drawing on examples as commonplace and as singular as atomic bombs, cinematic effects, pornographic ""macrophilia,"" monstrous creatures, and more, Wittenberg demonstrates how big things tap into our earliest experiences of the world, reigniting our most fundamental feelings about reality. In doing so, Wittenberg offers a new aesthetics of magnitude and of the special role that bigness plays in our everyday perception of objects and images.

By: David Wittenberg
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780226842905
ISBN 10: 0226842908
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 05 September 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Wittenberg is professor of English and Cinematic Arts at the University of Iowa. His books include Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative.

Reviews for Big Culture: Toward an Aesthetics of Magnitude

“In this ambitious and strikingly innovative book, Wittenberg argues that the concept of ‘bigness’ is a formative response to the incalculably large and threatening that is repressed by the ‘adult’ system of measurement but reemerges to haunt us in aesthetic works. Ranging from representations of the atomic bomb and the sinking of the Titanic to works such as Pacific Rim and Gulliver’s Travels, Wittenberg produces profound and exciting insights about our relation to scale.” -- Mary Ann Doane, University of California, Berkeley “Big Culture’s big idea is that aesthetic judgments doggedly devalue bigness. In revaluation, Wittenberg refines the category of the big to the unsublime consistency of the object itself. Thus charging subjects engaged in criticism to do big better, the book offers enchanting illuminations of architectural wonders, cinematic blockbusters, atomic rhetoric, erotic bodies, and the moon. Critics, consumers, and other big heads will marvel.” -- Anna Kornbluh, University of Illinois Chicago