Black is Beautiful

Paul C. Taylor teaches Philosophy and African American studies at the Pennsylvania State University, where he has also served as Head of the Department of African American studies. Professor Taylor has provided commentary on race and politics for newspapers and radio shows on four continents. He is the author of Race: A Philosophical Introduction (Polity, 2003; 2nd ed. 2013), has recently completed On Obama (Routledge, 2015), and is one of the editors of the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race (forthcoming).

"The greatest contribution of the book to analytic aesthetics is that by examining the black aesthetic tradition, Taylor invites us to rethink how aestheticians and philosophers of art have approached the aesthetic tradition in general." - Adriana Clavel-Vazquez, University of Hull - The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 59, Issue 2, April 2019

• Preface and Acknowledgments vii1 Assembly, Not Birth 11 Introduction 12 Inquiry and Assembly 33 On Blackness 64 On the Black Aesthetic Tradition 125 Black Aesthetics as/and Philosophy 196 Conclusion 262 No Negroes in Connecticut: Seers, Seen 321 Introduction 332 Setting the Stage: Blacking Up Zoe 353 Theorizing the (In)visible 364 Theorizing Visuality 435 Two Varieties of Black Invisibility: Presence and Personhood 486 From Persons to Characters: A Detour 517 Two More Varieties of Black Invisibility: Perspectives and Plurality 588 Unseeing Nina Simone 639 Conclusion: Phronesis and Power 693 Beauty to Set the World Right: The Politics of Black Aesthetics 771 Introduction 772 Blackness and the Political 803 Politics and Aesthetics 834 The Politics–Aesthetics Nexus in Black; or, “The Black Nation: A Garvey Production” 855 Autonomy and Separatism 876 Propaganda, Truth, and Art 887 What is Life but Life? Reading Du Bois 918 Apostles of Truth and Right 949 On “Propaganda” 9810 Conclusion 994 Dark Lovely Yet And; Or, How To Love Black Bodies While Hating Black People 1041 Introduction 1052 Circumscribing the Topic: Definitions and Distinctions 1073 Circumscribing the Topic, cont’d: Context and Scope 1094 The Cases 1105 Reading the Cases 1156 Conclusion 1295 Roots and Routes: Disarming Authenticity 1321 Introduction 1322 An Easy Case: The Germans in Yorubaland 1343 A Harder Case: Kente Capers 1364 Varieties of Authenticity 1385 From Exegesis to Ethics 1446 The Kente Case, Revisited 1516 Make It Funky; Or, Music’s Cognitive Travels and the Despotism of Rhythm 1551 Introduction 1562 Beyond the How‐Possible: Kivy’s Questions 1573 Stimulus, Culture, Race 1594 Preliminaries: Rhythm, Brains, and Race Music 1625 The Flaw in the Funk 1686 (Soul) Power to the People 1727 Funky White Boys and Honorary Soul Sisters 1748 Conclusion 1777 Conclusion: “It Sucks That I Robbed You”; Or, Ambivalence, Appropriation, Joy, Pain 182Index 186