The Power and Politics of the Aesthetic in American Culture

Edited by Klaus Benesch and Ulla Haselstein.

Seven literary and cultural historians discuss the topic with respect to multicultural diversity, fashion, the visual arts, aesthetic theory, the politics of race and sexuality, and, finally, America's response to 9/11. - While the ubiquity of the aesthetic in contemporary society can hardly be denied, the reasons for the staggering aestheticizing of private and social practices are manifold and have recently been subject to controversial debates within the humanities. Arguably, postmodern consumer culture, new hedonistic lifestyles, or the spectacularization of the political sphere are just another form of Americanization, yet the specific 'American' dimension of these phenomena often remains blurry. As the essays collected here show, to simply conflate the aestheticization of everyday life with an American consumerist ideology predicated on packaging and surfaces largely disregards the complex and tangled history of the aesthetic in Western cultures. In this volume, seven eminent literary and cultural historians from both Europe and the United States discuss the power and politics of the aesthetic in American culture (and elsewhere) with respect to multicultural diversity, fashion, the visual arts, aesthetic theory, the politics of race and sexuality, and, finally, America's response to the 9/11 attacks on New York. - Contents: Emory Elliott: Terror, Aesthetics, and the Humanities in the Public Sphere. - Winfried Flack: The Search for an "Artless Art". Aesthetics and American Culture. - Barbara Vinken: Eternity. A Frill on the Dress. - Juliane Rebentisch: The Politics of Art and the Power of the Aesthetic. - Judith Halberstam: Notes on Failure. - Fred Moten: Gestural Critique of Judgment. - Miles Orvell: Art in an Age of Catastrophe. Photographing September 11. - [4],127 Seiten mit 11 Farbabb., gebunden (Publications of the Bavarian American Academy; Vol. 7/Universitätsverlag Winter 2007)