An artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American
expressive culture
In a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian
Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the "proper" depiction of
black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic
abstractionism--a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than
striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially
artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms
the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge,
Harper contends that abstractionism shows up the actual constructedness
of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making
them amenable to transformation.
Arguing against the need for "positive" representations, Abstractionist
Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American
representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site
of African American cultural politics, and elevates experimental prose
within the domain of African American literature. Drawing on examples
across a variety of artistic production, including the visual work of
Fred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil
Taylor, and the prose and verse writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice
Walker, and John Keene, this book poses urgent questions about how
racial blackness is made to assume certain social meanings. In the
process, African American aesthetics are upended, rendering
abstractionism as the most powerful modality for Black representation.