Call for proposals for Post45 special issue: ‘The potential of cliché’
When we call something a cliché, we’re typically calling it tired, banal, repetitive, or boring. Whether it’s an art object, a turn of speech, or a pattern of behavior, we’re identifying what it lacks: distinctiveness, originality, creativity, thrill. But in pointing to a cliché, we’re also pointing to a response. Noticing cliché creates a fissure. It elicits a reflexive movement, by which we’re forced to reckon with the repetitiousness of language; the ideological and economic structures that shape the creation of art; the social patterns that guide how we relate and self-present. Pointing to cliché, in other words, opens up the possibility for subversion.