This dissertation, "Two Versions of the Cliche" by Nadim David, Abbas, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled Two Versions of the Cliche submitted by Abbas, Nadim David for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in October 2005 Drawing from a wide range of theory and art practices, this thesis explores the way in which the contexts and functions of the cliche have changed in accordance with the socio-cultural conditions and events of the past two centuries. Out of these observations arise what I have called the 'two versions of the cliche', namely, the cliche as both symptom of the deterioration of modern experience and a strategy of resistance against that very same deterioration. The thesis is divided into three parts: Chapter One outlines a first version of the cliche. The dominant view on the relationship between art and the cliche argues that art, in order to maintain its integrity, must necessarily distance itself from the cliche. For example, Roland Barthes' semiological analysis of what he calls modern myth (which I parallel with the cliche) links it to issues of power and ideology. Similarly, D. H. Lawrence, in his comments on Cezanne, stresses art's contestation of the cliche. Chapter Two discusses in greater depth some arguments against the cliche made by Clement Greenberg and Theodor Adorno. Important as these arguments are, on kitsch and the culture industry, they nevertheless lead to a kind of cultural impasse that leaves modern art no choice other than to stagnate in silence and negation. It is at this point that I go on to outline, via Benjamin's writings on Baudelaire, a second version of the cliche. Here it is not a matter of rejecting the cliche and keeping it at a distance from the artwork at all costs. Rather, what Baudelaire did was to use what Benjamin called 'allegory' to create a kind of disjunctive, or dissonant frame around the cliche. Chapter Three goes on to consider some more contemporary approaches to the cliche; in Pop Art, Situationist arguments on detournement, and in the notion of the uncanny. The chapter concludes with an account of the work of Mike Kelley that focuses on the cliche-as-the-uncanny. To conclude, I pose some speculations on the future of the cliche. DOI: 10.5353/th_b3624417 Subjects: Cliches Arts, Modern - History and criticism