Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World

Author:   Anna Arabindan-Kesson
Publisher:   Duke University Press
ISBN:  

9781478011927


Pages:   320
Publication Date:   14 May 2021
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World


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Overview

"In Black Bodies, White Gold Anna Arabindan-Kesson uses cotton, a commodity central to the slave trade and colonialism, as a focus for new interpretations of the way art, commerce, and colonialism were intertwined in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. In doing so, Arabindan-Kesson models an art historical approach that makes the histories of the Black diaspora central to nineteenth-century cultural production. She traces the emergence of a speculative vision that informs perceptions of Blackness in which artistic renderings of cotton-as both commodity and material-became inexorably tied to the monetary value of Black bodies. From the production and representation of ""negro cloth""-the textile worn by enslaved plantation workers-to depictions of Black sharecroppers in photographs and paintings, Arabindan-Kesson demonstrates that visuality was the mechanism through which Blackness and cotton became equated as resources for extraction. In addition to interrogating the work of nineteenth-century artists, she engages with contemporary artists such as Hank Willis Thomas, Lubaina Himid, and Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, who contend with the commercial and imperial processes shaping constructions of Blackness and meanings of labor."

Full Product Details

Author:   Anna Arabindan-Kesson
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Weight:   0.975kg
ISBN:  

9781478011927


ISBN 10:   1478011920
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   14 May 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii Illustrations  xv Introduction: Threads of Empire  1 1. Circuits of Cotton  29 2. Market Aesthetics: Color, Cloth, and Commerce  67 3. Of Vision and Value: Landscape and Labor after Slavery  121 4. Material Histories and Speculative Conditions  171 Coda: A Material with Memory  203 Notes  213 Bibliography  247 Index  285

Reviews

Beautifully conceived, consummately researched, and effectively presented, Black Bodies, White Gold makes an important contribution to art history, African American and Black diaspora studies, American studies, and British Empire studies. -- Lisa Lowe, author of * The Intimacies of Four Continents * Anna Arabindan-Kesson's book offers an expansive visual accounting of cotton and its representations, from 'negro cloth' to contemporary art, that impressively charts the materiality, meaning, and memory of 'white gold' in the making of the Atlantic world and beyond. It is an exemplary model of African diasporic and globally oriented histories of art. -- Krista Thompson, author of * Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice * Arabindan-Kesson's book expands the analytic potential of previous art-historical studies that trace the representation of Blackness across the threshold after emancipation.... One of its most valuable contributions to the field of art history ... is its inventive recourse across time, folding contemporary art into a methodology that illuminates subaltern historical conditions otherwise excluded or redacted from the archive. -- C.C. McKee * Panorama * This thoughtful, well-illustrated book offers a long-overdue, original, engaged approach to studies of the cotton economy in tandem with slavery. . . . Arabindan-Kesson initiates new ways of seeing and reading visual art toward revealing and facing difficult truths about persistent race discrimination and injustice. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice * [Arabindan-Kesson's] beautifully written storytelling is not only highly engaging and compelling to read, but . . . also offer[s] an indispensable account of the ways in which racial capitalism and corporate imperialism have shaped and been shaped by visual culture. -- Edwin Coomasaru * Oxford Art Journal *


Beautifully conceived, consummately researched, and effectively presented, Black Bodies, White Gold makes an important contribution to art history, African American and Black diaspora studies, American studies, and British Empire studies. -- Lisa Lowe, author of * The Intimacies of Four Continents * Anna Arabindan-Kesson's book offers an expansive visual accounting of cotton and its representations, from 'negro cloth' to contemporary art, that impressively charts the materiality, meaning, and memory of 'white gold' in the making of the Atlantic world and beyond. It is an exemplary model of African diasporic and globally oriented histories of art. -- Krista Thompson, author of * Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice * Arabindan-Kesson's book expands the analytic potential of previous art-historical studies that trace the representation of Blackness across the threshold after emancipation.... One of its most valuable contributions to the field of art history ... is its inventive recourse across time, folding contemporary art into a methodology that illuminates subaltern historical conditions otherwise excluded or redacted from the archive. -- C.C. McKee * Panorama * [Arabindan-Kesson's] beautifully written storytelling is not only highly engaging and compelling to read, but . . . also offer[s] an indispensable account of the ways in which racial capitalism and corporate imperialism have shaped and been shaped by visual culture. -- Edwin Coomasaru * Oxford Art Journal *


Beautifully conceived, consummately researched, and effectively presented, Black Bodies, White Gold makes an important contribution to art history, African American and black diaspora studies, American studies, and British Empire studies. -- Lisa Lowe, author of * The Intimacies of Four Continents *


Author Information

Anna Arabindan-Kesson is Assistant Professor of Black Diaspora Art at Princeton University.

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