The promise of beauty / Mimi Thi Nguyen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nguyen, Mimi Thi, 1974- author.

Series:

e-Duke books scholarly collection

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aesthetics--Political aspects.

Aesthetics.

Aesthetics--Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 298 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2024.

Summary:

"The Promise of Beauty examines how the perceived presence and absence of beauty structures cultural and historical inquiry. Drawing on a background in feminist and Asian American studies, Mimi Thi Nguyen approaches beauty as a method that attends to questions of aesthetics and politics from within a multisensory world history. Beauty also acts a vehicle for engaging contemporary narratives of crisis. Comprehending beauty in this way, Nguyen analyzes affective and aesthetic responses to scarcity, precarity, and uncertainty through the crises of war and colonial and capital dispossession. Utilizing historical and philosophical thinkers from Plato and Adorno to Elaine Scarry and Saidiya Hartman, Nguyen describes how beauty operates as a reference for the human, collectivity, politics, ethics, and other forms of life. In doing so, she seeks to understand the promise of beauty and how it functions as a world-building engagement"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Small Art and Love and Beauty

The Beautiful, Finding Itself in Danger, Desires Its Copy

An Education in Beauty (and the Necessity of Lawlessness)

The Right to Be Beautiful without Guarantee

Beauty's Ruin at the End of the World

Living Beautifully, or Resilience

In Conclusion, Crime is Beauty.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Nguyen, Mimi Thi, 1974- Promise of beauty.

ISBN:

9781478060000

147806000X

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.