Aesthetics Across the Color Line: Why Nietzsche (Sometimes) Can't Sing the Blues

by James J. Winchester

Overview

Imagine Immanuel Kant discussing art with bell hooks and Cornel West. Or Friedrich Nietzsche hanging around at a blues club. In Aesthetics Across the Color Line, James Winchester brings the western philosophical tradition into dialog with contemporary African-American thinkers in an attempt to bridge (or at least understand) the culture gap in aesthetic judgments.

In this unique study, James Winchester urges philosophers to reexamine traditional aesthetic theory in light of recent writings by prominent African-American thinkers. Winchester focuses on the black-white cultural divide in the United States, but his theories also help frame the way we think about all cross-cultural aesthetic judgments. It is high time this book appeared in this age of multiculturalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742513914
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	09/24/2002
Edition description:	2002
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.86(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

James Winchester is assistant professor of philosophy at Georgia College and State University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Understanding the Art of Others Chapter 2 Understanding Aesthetic Judgments across Cultural Borders Chapter 3 Why Nietzsche (Sometimes) Can't Sing the Blues; or Davis, Nietzsche, and the Social Embededness of Aesthetic Judgments Chapter 4 Misunderstanding Aesthetic Judgments across Cultural Divides Chapter 5 Adorno, Jazz, and the Limits of Apprenticeship Chapter 6 Art and the Politics of Representation in the South Bronx

Editorial Reviews

This is an adventurous critical encounter between Continental philosophical aesthetics and some key works from 20th-century black Americans.

Choice

Aesthetics Across the Color Line poses an important and timely question: the question of aesthetic judgements across cultural borders. James Winchester addresses it in original ways. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the intersection of art and politics in the contemporary world.

Robert Bernasconi

This is an adventurous critical encounter between Continental philosophical aesthetics and some key works from 20th-century black Americans.

CHOICE

Winchester's book tackles a difficult and timely subject—cultural diversity in the evaluation of art, especially in the context of contemporary America. To do so he draws on a wide range of classical and recent aesthetic theories and offers a wealth of examples. His book is as diverse and wide-ranging as its topic, but it is guided by a steady theoretical hand throughout.

David Carr

With impressive ease and grace, Winchester guides us through the bold and subtle theories of Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Adorno in search of clues for understanding the art of the oppressed. From a brilliant weave of art and theory comes a highly persuasive conclusion that is neither modern nor postmodern: Art gives us a glimpse, however incomplete, into the world of others.

Cynthia Willett

This is an adventurous critical encounter between Continental philosophical aesthetics and some key works from 20th-century black Americans.

Choice Reviews