Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Promise of Beauty" (Duke UP, 2024)

Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Promise of Beauty" (Duke UP, 2024)

In The Promise of Beauty (Duke UP, 2024), Mimi Thi Nguyen explores the relationship between the concept of beauty and narratives of crisis and catastrophe. Nguyen conceptualizes beauty, which, she observes, we turn to in emergencies and times of destruction, as a tool to identify and bridge the discrepancy between the world as it is and what it ought to be. Drawing widely from aesthetic and critical theories, Nguyen outlines how beauty—or its lack—points to the conditions that must exist for it to flourish. She notes that an absence of beauty becomes both a political observation and a call to action to transform the conditions of the situation so as to replicate, preserve, or repair beauty. The promise of beauty can then engender a critique of social arrangements and political structures that would set the foundations for its possibility and presence. In this way, Nguyen highlights the role of beauty in inspiring action toward a more just world. Mimi Thi Nguyen is Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her first book, called The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, focuses on the promise of “giving” freedom concurrent and contingent with waging war (Duke University Press, 2012; Outstanding Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association of Asian American Studies, 2014). She is also co-editor with Fiona I.B. Ngo and Mariam Lam of a special issue of positions: asia critique on Southeast Asian American Studies (20:3, Winter 2012), and co-editor with Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu of Alien Encounters: Pop Culture in Asian America (Duke University Press, 2007). Her papers have been solicited for the Feminist Theory Archive at Brown University. Her second book is called The Promise of Beauty, and she is part of an editorial collective with Patty Ahn, Michelle Cho, Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez, Rani Neutill, and Yutian Wong for Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader; both books are being published with Duke University Press in 2024. She has also published in Signs, Camera Obscura, The Funambulist, Women & Performance, positions, Radical History Review, and ArtForum. Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Episoder(2157)

Kurt Dopfer, “Modern Evolutionary Economics: An Overview” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Kurt Dopfer, “Modern Evolutionary Economics: An Overview” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

This week we met Prof. Kurt Dopfer (Universität St Gallen, Switzerland) to talk about Modern Evolutionary Economics: An Overview (Cambridge University Press, 2018), a book he co-authored with eight ot...

14 Sep 201845min

Shelley Tremain, “Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability” (U Michigan Press, 2017)

Shelley Tremain, “Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability” (U Michigan Press, 2017)

How should we understand disability? In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2017), Dr. Shelley Tremain explores this complex question from the perspective of ...

11 Sep 201834min

Dagmar Herzog, “Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes” (Cambridge UP, 2017)

Dagmar Herzog, “Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes” (Cambridge UP, 2017)

‘Create two, three—many Freuds!’ That, Dagmar Herzog shows, was the forgotten slogan of the Cold War. With Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes (Cambridge University Press, 2017), ...

7 Sep 201845min

Charles Umney, “Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st-Century Britain” (Pluto Press, 2018)

Charles Umney, “Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st-Century Britain” (Pluto Press, 2018)

What is class? In Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st-Century Britain (Pluto Press, 2018), Charles Umney, an Associate Professor in Work and Employment Relations at the University of Le...

3 Sep 201843min

Sean Molloy, “Kant’s International Relations: The Political Theology of Perpetual Peace” (U Michigan Press, 2017)

Sean Molloy, “Kant’s International Relations: The Political Theology of Perpetual Peace” (U Michigan Press, 2017)

What does Kant have to tell us about International Relations? In Kant’s International Relations: The Political Theology of Perpetual Peace (University of Michigan Press, 2017), Sean Molloy, a Reader i...

29 Aug 201848min

Larisa Jašarević, “Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt” (Indiana UP, 2017)

Larisa Jašarević, “Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt” (Indiana UP, 2017)

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarević traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-Herze...

24 Aug 201858min

Yves Citton, “The Ecology of Attention” (Polity Press, 2017)

Yves Citton, “The Ecology of Attention” (Polity Press, 2017)

We are arguably living in the midst of a form of economy where attention has become a key resource and value, labor, class, and currency are being reconfigured as a result. But how is this happening, ...

13 Aug 20181h 10min

The Invisible Committee, “Now” (Semiotext(e), 2017)

The Invisible Committee, “Now” (Semiotext(e), 2017)

What could the communism of the future be? In Now  (Semiotext(e), 2017), The Invisible Committee explores our current crisis by thinking through key critical theory questions, along with specific inte...

13 Aug 201857min

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