Ebook: Abstractionist aesthetics: artistic form and social critique in African American culture

In a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the 'proper' depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionism - a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, Harper contends that abstractionism shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation.