Introduction: The art of revolution -- The question of "closing ranks" -- The claim of innocence: deconstructing the machinery of whiteness -- The suspicion of kinship: critiquing the construct of black unity -- The bodily logic of "revolutionizing the mind" -- The demands on reproduction: worrying the limits of gender identity -- The space of sex: reconfiguring the coordinates of subjectivity -- Conclusion: queering representation.
Summary:
"This project links the engagement of Black nationalist activism to artistic experimentation in recent African American literature, visual art, and film. GerShun Avilez argues that the ideology of modern Black nationalism functions as a dominant means for artistic and theoretical experimentation in African-American literary and visual artwork in the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The project provides a new genealogy of contemporary African American artistic production while also shedding new light on the Black Arts Movement (1965-1975) and placing emphasis on how questions of gender and sexuality guide the artistic experimentation discussed throughout the work. More specifically, Avilez unravels how the artistic production of the Black Arts era provides a set of critical methodologies and paradigms rooted in the disidentification with Black nationalist discourses, which gives rise to a subjectivity Avilez refers to as aesthetic radicalism. This term describes the engaged critique of nationalist rhetoric that appears prominently during the 1960s and that continues to offer novel means for expressing Black intimacy and embodiment and producing experimental works of art and innovate artistic methods.--Provided by publisher.
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