{"product_id":"for-pleasure-9781479826728","title":"For Pleasure","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eArgues that aesthetic pleasure plays a key role in both racial practices and struggles against racist\u003cbr\u003edomination\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor Pleasure\u003c\/i\u003e proposes that experimental aesthetics shaped race in the twentieth-century United States\u003cbr\u003eby creating transformative scenes of pleasure. Rachel Jane Carroll explains how aesthetic pleasure is\u003cbr\u003efundamental to the production and circulation of racial meaning in the United States through a study of\u003cbr\u003eexperimental work by authors and artists of color.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor Pleasure\u003c\/i\u003e offers methods for reading experimental literature and art produced by racially minoritized\u003cbr\u003eauthors and artists working in and around the US, including Isaac Julien, Nella Larsen, Yoko Ono, Jack\u003cbr\u003eWhitten, Byron Kim, Glenn Ligon, Zora Neale Hurston, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Cici Wu. Along the\u003cbr\u003eway, we learn what a racist joke has to do with the history of monochrome painting, if beauty has a part\u003cbr\u003eto play in social change, and whether whim\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a world where the category of race too easily conjures up the ugliest aspects of social\u003cbr\u003e inequality, xenophobia, and racial violence, Rachel Carroll’s exquisite new book reminds us that\u003cbr\u003e racial difference can also be a site of extraordinary beauty, imagination, and communion.\u003cbr\u003e Through a meticulous and generous reading of twentieth-century experimental cultural\u003cbr\u003e forms, \u003ci\u003eFor Pleasure \u003c\/i\u003erecovers a tradition of Black and Asian American artists refiguring race as\u003cbr\u003e an open invitation to ceaselessly play with and recombine the various facets of phenotypical\u003cbr\u003e difference. The artists Carroll assembles ultimately aim to wholly disorganize our sense of what\u003cbr\u003e counts as beautiful, opening up the field of pleasure to continual revision.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Ramzi Fawaz, author of Queer Forms\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrilling and inventive at every turn. Carroll seeks to recover aesthetic and erotic pleasure in\u003cbr\u003e literary, visual, and performative art, and she does so in unexpected ways and places. In arguing\u003cbr\u003e that aesthetic pleasure and innovation can undo the unfreedom of racism in which we find\u003cbr\u003e ourselves, this well-argued and stylistically sophisticated book reveals experimental art to be an\u003cbr\u003e undeniable vehicle of social theory.\u003c\/p\u003e -- GerShun Avilez, University of Maryland","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409067417943,"sku":"9781479826728","price":62.9,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781479826728.jpg?v=1730505313","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/for-pleasure-9781479826728","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}