Democracy and beauty : the political aesthetics of W.E.B. Du Bois / Robert Gooding-Williams.
| Author/creator | Gooding-Williams, Robert author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | New York : Columbia University Press, [2025] |
| Copyright Date | ©2025 |
| Description | 262 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Portion of title | Political aesthetics of W.E.B. Du Bois |
| Series | Leonard Hastings Schoff memorial lectures |
| Contents | Darkwater, Democracy, and Aesthetic Educaton -- Moral Psychology of White Supremacy -- Democratic Despotism -- Beauty -- Propaganda -- Pessimism -- Du Bois's Pluralism : Unfinished Lives, Unfinished Societies. |
| Abstract | "During the decade of the First World War African American philosopher W.E.B. Du Bois argued that white supremacy thwarted the democratic political aspirations of the earth's "darker peoples," rendering them vulnerable to race-based economic exploitation and anti-Black mob violence. At the same time he proposed an aesthetics that foregrounded beauty as a political force that both motivated Black struggle against white supremacy and even undermined its grip on those who perpetuated it. Because it is rooted in the entrenched habits--the moral character--of the white supremacist and resists rational revision, Du Bois argued, beauty has a unique role in unsettling and transforming the pernicious habits that perpetuate it. Entrenched beliefs and assumptions must be attacked with weapons of sudden and immediate "assault." Artistic beauty is one of those weapons: it can contest and discompose white Christian religious self-understanding. Bridging the Nietzschean pessimism of his time and the Afropessimism of our own, Du Bois's wager is that, though white supremacy will always exist, perhaps it can be lessened, because it is not an essential aspect of the world and the struggle against it can never be foreclosed"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Gooding-Williams, Robert Democracy and beauty New York : Columbia University Press, [2025] 9780231563024 |
| LCCN | 2024038155 |
| ISBN | 9780231220033 |
| ISBN | 9780231220026 (hardback) |
| ISBN | 0231220022 |
| ISBN | 0231220030 |
| ISBN | (ebook) |
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