A review of Awkwardness: A Theory, by Associate Professor of Philosophy Alexandra Plakias ’02, was published in the July 19 issue of The Times Literary Supplement (TLS).
In the review, titled “The awkward squad: When life throws up a situation for which there is no script,” Miranda France called the book “a warmly and well-written study, which argues for a better understanding of the phenomenon so that we can learn both to defuse the discomfort that it causes and to recognize it as ‘a tool for moral and social progress.’”
France pointed out Plakias’ contention that people are not awkward, but rather that awkwardness is a property arising from a particular situation. Summarizing some of the awkward situations covered in the book, France noted that the examples Plakias gives “mostly concern real-life encounters, but surely the online space is even harder to negotiate because of the absence of cues.”
In conclusion, France wrote, “I like Plakias’s description of awkwardness as the ‘um’ of feelings: it marks out the areas of life about which we feel ambivalent and ‘buys us time to figure out what we really want to say, and to work up the resolve to say it.’”
