Black Is Beautiful

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BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics. Paul C. Taylor. "Combining a background in Anglo-American aesthetics with a deep knowledge of black expressive culture, and ramified by a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary mastery of cultural studies across the humanities, Paul Taylor's Black is Beautiful succeeds in situating black aesthetics in a strikingly original way, one which is not only valuable in itself, but also commendably reinvigorates the discipline of aesthetics by reintegrating it with life. Taylor not only re-examines Du Bois and Morrison through Danto and Dewey, but, using carefully observed examples, expands the agenda of aesthetics in timely and profound ways." Noel Carroll, Past President of The American Society for Aesthetics. Throughout black history and culture, aesthetics has long been a central concern for black thinkers and activists, and yet this important subject has been almost entirely neglected by philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Black is Beautiful provides a long-overdue synthesis, identifying and exploring the most significant philosophical issues that emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of black life, both in the fine arts and beyond. Taylor forges a basic philosophical framework for comprehending black aesthetics. The book consists of seven chapters, each of which discusses a web of related themes and phenomena. Each chapter begins with one or two illustrative real-world examples, and then uses the complexities of these opening cases to introduce the relevant issues. This highly engaging book enables readers to see the multiplicity of the practices and themes gathered within the field, and effectively overturns conceptual barriers that obstruct adequate recognition of the meanings of black cultural works. Black is Beautiful provides an original theory that fills a void in the expressive and theoretical resources in aesthetics literature. --Book Jacket.

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