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In Between Shadows and Noise Amber Jamilla Musser theorizes sensation as a Black feminist method for aesthetic interpretation and criticism that uses the knowledges held by the body to access the unrepresentable. Thinking through Blackness, empire, and colonialism, Musser examines artworks ranging from Ming Smith’s Flamingo Fandango, Jordan Peele’s Us, and Katherine Dunham’s Shango to Samita Sinha’s This ember state, Titus Kaphar’s A Pillow for Fragile Fictions, and Teresita Fernández’s Puerto Rico (Burned) 6. She engages with these works from an embodied situatedness to grapple with the questions and sensations of racialization and difference that the works produce. Throughout, Musser rethinks how we consider the relationships between race, representation, and politics by dwelling in those spaces and concepts that elude Western norms of representation, objectivity, and logic. In so doing, she explores ways of being and knowing that exceed overdetermined parameters while offering a blueprint for sensing, imagining, and living otherwise.
Price: $25.95
Pages: 208
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Publication Date:
23 February 2024
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781478030096
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
“Between Shadows and Noise is a brilliant meditation on anti-imperial forms of enmeshment and relation that exist beyond monolithic representation. Through a carefully crafted and resoundingly intimate practice of critical situatedness, Amber Jamilla Musser brings the critic into embodied relation with every scene of encounter. Animal bodies, maternal bodies, the bodies of strangers, and our own vulnerable bodies coalesce in this beautiful book to orient us toward the plurivocal and multisensory worlds always proliferating against colonial capture.”—Julietta Singh, author of, The Breaks
“Bringing together unexpected constellations of contemporary texts while experimenting with form and point of view, Amber Jamilla Musser holistically reenvisions how a body of work can be stretched, massaged, and released in order to attune to the creative ways racialized, colonized, and queer bodies map and remap the embodied experiences of trauma and resilience. This thought-provoking, beautifully written, and creative work will reshape current conversations in Black studies, feminist studies, art criticism, performance studies, film studies, and beyond.”—Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, author of, The Color Pynk: Black Femme Art for Survival
“Bringing together unexpected constellations of contemporary texts while experimenting with form and point of view, Amber Jamilla Musser holistically reenvisions how a body of work can be stretched, massaged, and released in order to attune to the creative ways racialized, colonized, and queer bodies map and remap the embodied experiences of trauma and resilience. This thought-provoking, beautifully written, and creative work will reshape current conversations in Black studies, feminist studies, art criticism, performance studies, film studies, and beyond.”—Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, author of, The Color Pynk: Black Femme Art for Survival
Amber Jamilla Musser is Professor of English at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance and Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Body Work 1
1. Us, the Uncanny, and the Threat of Black Femininity 21
2. Inside Out: Shango and Spectacles of the Spirit 42
3. Noise and the Body-Place: This ember state and the Critical Encounter 59
4. On the Brink: Approximation, Difference, and Ongoing Storms 76
5. Tamarind, Metabolism, and Rest: Making Racialized Labor Visible 94
Conclusion. Inflammation: Notes from the Front 112
Notes 131
Bibliography 157
Index 175
Introduction. Body Work 1
1. Us, the Uncanny, and the Threat of Black Femininity 21
2. Inside Out: Shango and Spectacles of the Spirit 42
3. Noise and the Body-Place: This ember state and the Critical Encounter 59
4. On the Brink: Approximation, Difference, and Ongoing Storms 76
5. Tamarind, Metabolism, and Rest: Making Racialized Labor Visible 94
Conclusion. Inflammation: Notes from the Front 112
Notes 131
Bibliography 157
Index 175