The Art of Anti-Racism: Aesthetics, Race, and Contemporary Political Theory (SUNY series in Critical Political Science)

Leading scholars grounded in a range of disciplines examine the intersection of anti-racist activism, aesthetics, and contemporary political theory. The Art of Anti-Racism offers a sustained theoretical examination of the aesthetic dimensions of anti-racist struggle.It argues that political theory itself can be understood as an art-a dynamic process of claim-making and critically analyzing and expanding our ethical, moral and strategic visions.Politics, likewise, is the art of assembling messages, narratives, symbols, emotions, and affects in public and through collective institutions and structures.Art, in turn, can serve as a critique of existing political realities while gesturing toward a horizon beyond, reimagining the boundaries of the politically possible.Through its expressive capacity, art dramatizes subjectivity, experience, and aspirations, embodying the contestation that is central to democratic politics.Given these intersections, contemporary political theory offers invalu