Awkwardness.

Adam Kotsko’s little book Awkwardness is a pleasurable and insightful read, yet another reminder that Zero Books is quickly becoming the trusted source for short, punchy works on philosophy and cultural theory.

In the book, Kotsko offers a tiny theory of awkwardness: “The tension of awkwardness indicates that no social order is self-evident and no social order accounts for every possibility.”

From that perspective, he suggests three modes of awkwardness, each of which he analyzes in a separate chapter, keyed to an example from popular television. The Office embodies everyday awkwardness, a mode that first appears to be embodied in individuals violating a norm, but which is really embedded in a social situation. The second mode, cultural awkwardness describes some malaise in the social order that demands awkwardness for self-maintenance, exemplified by the films of Judd Apatow. And Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm serves as exemplar for the third mode, radical awkwardness, a panic arising from the collision of different social contexts for which no obvious norm of reconciliation exists.

Kotsko packs many thoughtful observations into the book, both about awkwardness itself and about the television shows and movies he chooses as his examples. My favorite is probably the lineage of labor he traces from the Fordist midcentury through the awkward 1970s to the ironic 1990s and back to the awkward 2000s. He makes a convincing argument that current interest in the 1970s is not mere nostalgia, but a return to the last historical moment defined by awkwardness. His interpretations of Judd Apatow’s films are also top-notch, offering needed relief from the head-scratching those movies inspire.

In the spirit of the subject, I want to offer three observations about the book, each of which embodies one of the three modes of awkwardness as suggested by Kotsko.

While the book is very readable, it still falls into the occasional staleness and obfuscation. At several points I found myself recalling another kind of awkwardness, that of scholarly writing. Dependent clauses continue endlessly, taped together by magical commas. Indeed, one might say that the very act of explaining a philosophical concept through examples from popular culture has become an awkward cliche, the monocled professor slumming with television or comic books in order to extract from them some kernel of wisdom.

This observation isn’t so much a criticism of Kotsko (am I not just as guilty?), but a note about the state of things. Indeed, if we take his argument seriously, the source lies not in individuals, but in the social situation of scholarly production itself.

In the blurb and the first chapter, Kotsko connects his argument to philosophy, suggesting that awkwardness has a role akin to that of anxiety in the thought of Martin Heidegger.

While some might celebrate this part of the book as the “serious philosophical frame” for what otherwise amounts to pop culture criticism, I feel the opposite. It reeks almost of parody to me, Heidegger’s appearance no less culturally awkward than the barrage of marijuana and pornography jokes in a Judd Apatow movie. Indeed, nearly 10% of the book is weighed down by the cultural awkwardness of Heidegger homage, a cultural norm that deserves the Kotskoish name of “general malaise.”

A fact the reader might not know: Adam Kotsko has been a particularly snarky (if playful and generally non-trollish) critic of object-oriented ontology. He does this mostly on Twitter, in blog comments, and occasionally through entries on his own site. Suffice it to say that Kotsko falls in the camp of the incredulous when it comes to thinking about the world in terms of objects.

How awkward, then, that so much of his book on awkwardness feels so object-oriented. Indeed, Kotsko’s primary claim is that awkwardness arises as exhaust from the relations between different social orders, a clear endorsement of abstract concepts with strange, secret lives that operate independently of the humans that underwrite them. It’s even possible that awkwardness might offer a productive perspective on withdrawal, similar in purpose to Harman’s notions of cuteness, humor, and allure.

All told, Awkwardness will make a fine addition to any library, no matter its owner’s persuasion—philosopher, media scholar, television viewer, office worker, overgrown adolescent. It serves up a small slice of humble pie, as its reader realizes that nobody escapes awkwardness, for it is not something to be found in people but a thing of its own right.

A final note: the book is available on Kindle, but do get the paper copy instead. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on the print edition’s wonderfully thematic 1970s-throwback orange cover, and the awkward way the A’s in title and author just barely spill over the cover crease that facilitates the paperback’s lay-flat binding. Indeed, awkwardness truly can be found everywhere.