Worlding Black Aesthetics (AFAM 500)

Given the planetary scope increasingly implicit in contemporary art practice and the art world, this course asks after the relationship between politics and aesthetics in the current moment of planetary crisis. Critical discussion of the relation between aesthetics and politics is often framed as solely a question of enhancing democratic participation and emancipating publics. However, this approach is limited, and does not sufficiently account for colonial modernity’s role in the construction of the aesthetic, as well as its role in relegating populations to the category of the dispossesed and disenfranchised. Readings will include contemporary black aesthetic theories of refusal, fabulation, and poetics, and will draw on readings from: Edouard Glissant, Stuart Hall, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten, Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, John Keene, Dionne Brand, and  Sylvia Wynter, among others. Full syllabus can be viewed now on Canvas: AFAM 500