"On Household Appliances" Author: Wang Min'an Publisher: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House Producer: Xinxingsi

Air conditioning will tame the scorching sun outside;

Mobile phones can dispel loneliness;

Television and computers can satisfy people's curiosity (making them aware of what is happening outside);

Washing machines, refrigerators and gas stoves allow people to reproduce simple food and clothing effortlessly.

What kind of relationship do the household appliances we have long been accustomed to form with humans?

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On Household Appliances is a collection of essays by Professor Wang Min'an that explores the cultural theory of objects. This book takes household appliances as the subject of biography and explores the spatial power structure displayed by washing machines, refrigerators, mobile phones, televisions and other appliances in family life. This book allows us to see how household appliances domesticate and transform our daily lives.

The author skillfully combines theoretical vision with prose writing, which is full of insights and also incorporates the author's current life experiences and feelings.

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Most authors are concerned with taking living things as eternal objects of praise: a flower, a cat, or a cockroach that escapes from the side. Wang Min'an has the courage to break this routine. He expands the subject matter, from organic to inorganic. He believes that inanimate objects are also worthy of praise, and there are great reasons to praise them. The premise of praise is passion, and passion drives the desire to write.

——Hu Ranran, The Paper

For a long time, "theoretical texts" seem to have formed a stereotype in people's minds, as if such texts can only circulate in fixed patterns and discourses. However, "On Household Appliances" breaks this stereotype with a unique "speech flow" practice from personal experience to general experience and then to the "potential" analysis of life structure - "I don't want to use ideas to rape events" (Wang Min'an).

——Zhao Wen, Art World

From the perspective of cultural studies, "non-academic" language, and his own experience of using household appliances, he wrote a small "biography" for each of the appliances he was most familiar with, thinking about the life and death of "things".

——"Beijing News·Book Review Weekly"

In Wang Min'an's writing, postmodernism and cultural theory guide poetry and reality, and together depict a new picture of thought, that is, how do machines shape our urban life? Wang Min'an's way of talking about China gives us who are in the West or deeply shaped by the West the opportunity to re-examine ourselves.

-- Michael Dutton, Professor at University College London

Unlike most contemporary theory, this work exhibits an unexpected gentleness, a sense of space to inhabit and reflect upon, and it reminds us that the philosophical left can still write with slow pace, dialectical rigor, and beautiful style.

-- Andrew Pendakis, Professor at Brock University