Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism
GerShun Avilez
Abstract
This book explores the long-overlooked links between Black Nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. The book charts a new genealogy of contemporary African American artistic production that illuminates how questions of gender and sexuality guided artistic experimentation in the Black Arts Movement from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. As the book shows, the artistic production of the Black Arts era provides a set of critical methodologies and paradigms rooted in the disidentification with Black N ... More
This book explores the long-overlooked links between Black Nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. The book charts a new genealogy of contemporary African American artistic production that illuminates how questions of gender and sexuality guided artistic experimentation in the Black Arts Movement from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. As the book shows, the artistic production of the Black Arts era provides a set of critical methodologies and paradigms rooted in the disidentification with Black Nationalist discourses. The book studies how this emerging subjectivity, termed aesthetic radicalism, critiqued nationalist rhetoric in the past. It also continues to offer novel means for expressing black intimacy and embodiment via experimental works of art and innovative artistic methods. A bold addition to an advancing field, this book rewrites recent black cultural production even as it uncovers unexpected ways of locating black radicalism.
Keywords:
Black Nationalist activism,
artistic experimentation,
African American literature,
gender,
sexuality,
Black Arts Movement,
Black Arts era,
aesthetic radicalism,
black intimacy,
black radicalism
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780252040122 |
Published to Illinois Scholarship Online: April 2017 |
DOI:10.5406/illinois/9780252040122.001.0001 |