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Experiments in Exile

C. L. R. James, Hélio Oiticica, and the Aesthetic Sociality of Blackness

By (author) Laura Harris

Commonalities

Pub Date: August 7, 2018

ISBN: 9780823279791

Page Count: 232

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Price: $28.00

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Description: Comparing radical experiments undertaken by Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James and Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, Experiments in Exile charts their common desire to reconceive citizenship. Laura Harris shows how James and Oiticica gravitate toward and attempt to relay the ongoing renewal of dissident, dissonant social forms that constitute what she calls “the aesthetic sociality of blackness,” in the barrack-yards of Port-of-Spain and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the assembly lines of Detroit and the streets of the New York, ultimately challenging rather than rehabilitating normative conceptions of citizens and polities as well as authors and artworks.
Reviews: The first response of many readers may be to wonder what on earth links C.L.R. James and Hélio Oiticica This book’s critical themes of the motley crew, of theorizing issues of contact, of aesthetic sociality all answer the question well. What is crucial is that two such disparate characters, both contending with issues of exile, illegality and citizenship, each developed similar strategies for understanding culture and for projecting a future (even futuristic in Oiticica’s case) potential.---Aldon Lynn Nielsen, The Pennsylvania State University

Experiments in Exile generates brilliant insights... It is a text written in its moment but that contains theoretical, political, and aesthetic resources predicated upon a tomorrow world that needs collective, collaborative building and attendant values of comradeship. It is an exemplary model of radical, analysis (undoing), and care.
- American Literary History

[A] well-crafted and thought-provoking work... - New West Indian Guide
Table of Contents: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION: Experiments in Exile

CHAPTER ONE: What Happened to the Motley Crew? James, Oiticica and the Aesthetic Sociality of Blackness

CHAPTER TWO: Dialectic of Contact: The Organ/ization and The Nest

CHAPTER THREE: Undocuments: Reproduction at the Margins

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Details: ISBN-13 9780823279791
Published: 2018-08-07

Trim: 6.000in x 9.000in x 0.000in
Contributors: By (author) Laura Harris
Laura Harris is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Art and Public Policy at New York University.