On the Politics of Ugliness

Description

Ugliness or unsightlinessis much more than a quality or property of an individual’s appearance—it has long functioned as a social category that demarcates access to social, cultural, and political spaces and capital. The editors of and authors in this collection harness intersectional and interdisciplinary approaches in order to examine ugliness as a political category that is deployed to uphold established notions of worth and entitlement. On the Politics of Ugliness identifies and challenges the harmful effects that labels and feelings of ugliness have on individuals and the socio-political order. It explores ugliness in relation to the intersectional processes of racialization, colonization and settler colonialism, gender-making, ableism, heteronormativity, and fatphobia. On the Politics of Ugliness asks that we fight against visual injustice and imagine new ways of seeing. Front Matter ....Pages i-xviii Introduction: On the Politics of Ugliness (Ela Przybylo, Sara Rodrigues)....Pages 1-30 Ugliness (Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer)....Pages 31-49 Front Matter ....Pages 51-51 Listening to the Ugliness of Hetero-Erotic Miscommunication in Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms (Yetta Howard)....Pages 53-68 “Put on All Your Make-Up and Cry It Off in Public:” The Function of Ugliness in Femme Grieving Practices (Andi Schwartz)....Pages 69-89 I Want to Kill Myself (Vivek Shraya)....Pages 91-102 The Lesson of the Cockroach: Towards an Ethics of Ugliness (Esther Hutfless, Elisabeth Schäfer)....Pages 103-124 Front Matter ....Pages 125-125 (Un)Mapping the City Beautiful: Orlando Florida’s “Ugly” Settler Colonial Legacy (Stephanie K. Wheeler)....Pages 127-150 New Body Project(s): “Excess” Skin in the Context of Massive Weight Loss (Yasmina Katsulis)....Pages 151-170 The Indiscreet Charms of Spatial Ugliness: An Enquiry into a (Post)colonial City (Sayandeb Chowdhury)....Pages 171-192 Stigma Stains: The Somaesthetics of Institutional Abjection (Natasha Lushetich)....Pages 193-215 Front Matter ....Pages 217-217 Agatha’s Breasts on a Plate: “Ugliness” as Resistance and Queerness (Bernadette Wegenstein)....Pages 219-235 Imagining Ugliness: Failed Femininities, Shame, and Disgust Written Onto the “Other” Body (Breanne Fahs)....Pages 237-258 Ugliness as Colonial Violence: Mediations of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (Katherine Morton)....Pages 259-289 Writing Ugly (Melody Ellis)....Pages 291-307 Butler’s Monsters: The Grotesque and the Black Communal Body in Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Jalondra A. Davis)....Pages 309-334 Front Matter ....Pages 335-335 On the Limitations of the Rhetoric of Beauty: Embracing Ugliness in Contemporary Fat Visual Representations (Stefanie Snider)....Pages 337-365 The Ugly, the Uninvited, and the Unseen in the Work of Sia and Emma Sulkowicz (Karina Eileraas Karakuş)....Pages 367-388 Teaching While Ugly: A Story of Racial Pulchritude, Privilege, and Pedagogy (Michael Johnson Jr.)....Pages 389-410 The Ugly Gaze (Shannon Bell)....Pages 411-426 Back Matter ....Pages 427-433