Description
Book SynopsisIn The Difference Aesthetics Makes cultural critic Kandice Chuh asks what the humanities might be and do if organized around what she calls “illiberal humanism” instead of around the Western European tradition of liberal humanism that undergirds the humanities in their received form. Recognizing that the liberal humanities contribute to the reproduction of the subjugation that accompanies liberalism''s definition of the human, Chuh argues that instead of defending the humanities, as has been widely called for in recent years, we should radically remake them. Chuh proposes that the work of artists and writers like Lan Samantha Chang, Carrie Mae Weems, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Allan deSouza, Monique Truong, and othersbringsto bear ways of being and knowing that delegitimize liberal humanism in favor of more robust, capacious, and worldly senses of the human and the humanities. Chuh presents the aesthetics of illiberal humanism as vital to the creation
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“Chuh provides a lucid, polemical, and extraordinarily persuasive proposal for reconceiving the humanities.... It is difficult to come away from The Difference Aesthetics Makes without feeling that it makes an exceptional contribution to cultural studies in particular and to the humanities at large.” -- Kiron Ward * Journal of American Studies *
“In The Difference Aesthetics Makes, Kandice Chuh provides a fresh answer to an old question: What if losing the humanities as many have known them does not constitute a crisis? What if, after all, this so-called crisis affords an opportunity for the humanities to be remade?” -- Michele Speitz * Journal Of British Studies *
Table of Contents
Preface xi
Introduction. The Difference Aesthetics Makes 1
1. Knowledge under Cover 26
2. Pedagogies of Liberal Humanism 51
3. Making Sense Otherwise 74
4. Mis/Taken Universals 89
Conclusion. On the Humanities "After Man" 122
Postscript 126
Notes 131
Bibliography 159
Index 175
