
Beautiful Democracy
Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era
Russ Castronovo(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Will be published approx. on 1. September 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-0-226-09629-2 (ISBN)
Description
The photographer and reformer Jacob Riis once wrote, "I have seen an armful of daisies keep the peace of a block better than a policeman and his club." Riis was not alone in his belief that beauty could tame urban chaos, but are aesthetic experiences always a social good? Could aesthetics also inspire violent crime, working-class unrest, and racial murder? To answer these questions, Russ Castronovo turns to those who debated claims that art could democratize culture - civic reformers, anarchists, novelists, civil rights activists, and college professors - to reveal that beauty provides unexpected occasions for radical, even revolutionary, political thinking. "Beautiful Democracy" explores the intersection of beauty and violence by examining university lectures and course materials on aesthetics from a century ago along with riots, acts of domestic terrorism, magic lantern exhibitions, and other public spectacles. Philosophical aesthetics, realist novels, urban photography, and black periodicals, Castronovo argues, inspired and instigated all sorts of collective social endeavors, from the progressive nature of tenement reform to the horrors of lynching. Discussing Jane Addams, W. E.
B. Du Bois, Charlie Chaplin, William Dean Howells, and Riis as aesthetic theorists in the company of Kant and Schiller, "Beautiful Democracy" ultimately suggests that the distance separating academic thinking and popular wisdom about social transformation is narrower than we generally suppose.
B. Du Bois, Charlie Chaplin, William Dean Howells, and Riis as aesthetic theorists in the company of Kant and Schiller, "Beautiful Democracy" ultimately suggests that the distance separating academic thinking and popular wisdom about social transformation is narrower than we generally suppose.
Reviews / Votes
"Beautiful Democracy is an important book, reestablishing aesthetics as a vital issue both within the immediate field of American literature and far beyond it. It engages a long and complexly developed conversation on the politics of form, using rich archival material, ranging from college curricula, black print culture, and the history of film." - Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University"More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 23 mm
Width: 16 mm
Thickness: 2 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-09629-2 (9780226096292)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
05/2009
1st Edition
University of Chicago Press
€41.69
Available for download
Person
Russ Castronovo is the Jean Wall Bennett Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.