Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age

Emory Elliott is University Professor at the University of California, Riverside. Louis Freitas Caton is Professor of English at Auburn University. Jeffrey Rhyne is a graduate fellow in English at the University of California, Riverside.

• Contributors Emory Elliott: Introduction: Cultural Diversity and the Problem of Aesthetics PART I. CHALLENGES TO AN AESTHETICS OF DIVERSITY Satya P. Mohanty: Can Our Values Be Objective? On Ethics, Aesthetics, and Progressive Politics Giles Gunn: The Pragmatics of the Aesthetic Winfried Fluck: Aesthetics and Cultural Studies John Carlos Rowe: The Resistance to Cultural Studies PART II. REDEFINING CATEGORIES OF VALUE AND DIFFERENCE Shelley Fisher Fishkin: Desegregating American Literary Studies Robyn Wiegman: Difference and Disciplinarity Donald E. Pease: Doing Justice to C.L.R. James's Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways Johnella E. Butler: Mumbo Jumbo, Theory, and the Aesthetics of Wholeness PART III. AESTHETIC JUDGMENT AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE Paul Lauter: Aesthetics Again? The Pleasures and the Dangers Amelia Jones: "Every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure": Beauty Discourse and the Logic of Aesthetics Kathleen McHugh: The Aesthetics of Wounding: Trauma, Self-Representation, and the Critical Voice Chon A. Noriega: Beautiful Identities: When History Turns State's Evidence Heinz Ickstadt: Toward a Pluralist Aesthetics Louis Freitas Caton: Afterword Index

The contributors to this volume all make separate, and mostly compelling, cases for the revitalization of the aesthetic in textual and extra-textual cultural productions.... Valuable for detailing aesthetics' continued relevance and even necessity for contemporary cultural study.