Black Studies Reading List for Philosophers of Art

Nicholas Whittaker, a member of the American Society for Aesthetics and doctoral candidate at the City University of New York, has prepared a list of recommended reading on Black Studies for Philosophers of Art. It is with great pride that it is published here with Nicholas' permission.

For the complete list in Word Format, click here.

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Black Studies Reading List for Philosophers of Art

The following is a list of texts from the blurry, tough-to-define tradition known as “black studies” that I think philosophers of art and aesthetics ought to be reading. These texts, as texts from “black studies,” are both outside of the standard frames of philosophy and centered on the intersection between blackness and aesthetics. Of course, then, these texts will be of special interests to those who work on raced aesthetics, and social aesthetics generally. However, I share this list to encourage philosophers who do not work at that precise intersection to engage in these texts. I believe these texts are useful for “philosophy of art simpliciter”; or, another way to put it: I think philosophers of art should be creating theories of “art simpliciter” by taking into account the innovative, systematic contributions of these theorists, and by taking into account blackness more generally. These texts have much to offer, much more than mainstream philosophers often imagine; I encourage you to explore them!


1. In The Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition by Fred Moten
a. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/in-the-break
b. One of those books that's become mythology. It's hard to find a work on black aesthetics post-2003 that doesn't cite it. It's not dramatic to call it a paradigm shift. Introduces or reimagines crucial aesthetic concepts like “improvisation,” “ensemble,” “form” and art as language.
c. Essential for: phil of poetry, of music, ontology of art, aesthetic experience, history of aesthetics (especially Derrida, Marx, and Kant)

2. Black, White, and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture by Hortense Spillers
a. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo3624045.html
b. The brilliance of Spillers collected all in one place! A foundational text that illustrates the centrality of semiotics in Spiller’s theory of art, and is crucial to developing an account of American literature.
c. Useful for: philosophy of literature, semiotics

3. Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing by Jared Sexton
a. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319661698
b. A somewhat underread, but brilliant extension of the Afropessimist corner of black studies. A sharp and comprehensive account of the norms of intelligibility constraining popular cinema through figures of the police, the patriarch, and the black man.
c. Useful for: philosophy of cinema

4. Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility by Ashon T. Crawley
a. https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823274550/blackpentecostal-breath/
b. One of my favorite books of all time. A brilliant grounding of anarchic sociality in aesthetics and spirituality.
c. Useful for: philosophy of performance, philosophy of music, aesthetic experience, aesthetic relationality

5. Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/seeing-the-unspeakable
b. A brilliantly deep contemplation of both Walker and her work, with deep ramifications for theorizing about gallery art in the 21st century.
c. Useful for: philosophy of visual art, philosophy of modern art, philosophy of museums

6. None Like Us: Blackness, Belonging, Aesthetic Life by Stephen Best
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/seeing-the-unspeakable
b. A genius intervention on black studies itself, employing queer theory, art studies, and phil of history to challenge the possibility of recuperating facts and phenomena of black historical *and aesthetic* life.
c. Useful for: ontology of art, historical aesthetics

7. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis
a. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/37351/blues-legacies-and-black-feminism-by-angela-y-davis/
b. A brilliant and, at the time, unprecedented study of women-driven blues and its aesthetic, social, political, and philosophical complexities.
c. Useful for: phil of music, social aesthetics

8. Red, White, and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms, by Frank B. Wilderson
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/red-white-and-black
b. Both a long-overdue theory of black cinema and a demand for a return to structuralism as the model of social philosophy. Argues that modern cinema is defined by an erasure of gratuity that makes the representation of blackness impossible
c. Useful for: philosophy of cinema, philosophy of art generally

9. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-wake
b. A brilliant poetic examination of the phenomenology of living in what Saidiya Hartman calls "the afterlife of slavery", through a close examination of art.
c. Useful for: philosophy of art, art and emotion

10. Dark Designs and Visual Culture by Michelle Wallace
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/dark-designs-and-visual-culture
b. A collection of Wallace's criticism and essays. Wallace's work on gender often overshadows her extensive aesthetic theorizing: no more!
c. Useful for: philosophy of art, social aesthetics, philosophy of cinema, philosophy of pop culture

11. Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture by Phillip Brian Harper
a. https://nyupress.org/9781479818365/abstractionist-aesthetics/
b. It argues that black aesthetics is best understood not as enframing and presenting the "truth" of black life, but as the opportunity to radically circumvent the logics of intelligibility; abstraction becomes a crucial way to imagine that.
c. Useful for: philosophy of poetry, philosophy of visual art, philosophy of modern art

12. “Notes on Trap” by Jesse McCarthy
a. https://nplusonemag.com/issue-32/essays/notes-on-trap/
b. Even as "philosophy and hip hop" has some traction, the "low art" of trap is erased. This article shows how much it has to offer us.
c. Useful for: philosophy of music

13. The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin
a. https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Finds-Work-Vintage-International/dp/0307275957
b. One of the greatest writings on film (not just "film criticism") ever. Seriously. Not to be missed.
c. Useful for: philosophy of cinema, "identification" in art

14. Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery by Glenda Carpio
a. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/laughing-fit-to-kill-9780195304701?cc=us&lang=en&
b. A deeply intricate study of the tradition of black humor, with special focus on categorizing different forms of humor and their social work
c. Useful for: phil of humor, phil of stand-up comedy, phil of literature, emotion and art

15. Black Looks: Race and Representation by bell hooks
a. https://www.routledge.com/Black-Looks-Race-and-Representation/hooks/p/book/9781138821552
b. This collection shows that hooks insights into art stretch far beyond "eating the other."
c. Useful for: philosophy of art, philosophy of popular culture, gender and art

16. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects by Christina Sharpe
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/monstrous-intimacies
b. A survey of literature aimed at examining the complex ambiguity of black subjectivity. Sharpe's first work, it exemplifies her razor-sharp analytics.
c. Useful for: philosophy of literature, social aesthetics

17. Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film by Michael Boyce Gillepsie
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/film-blackness
b. This brilliant text argues that black cinema isn't a genre, but a way of looking, which reveals the complexity of art experience.
c. Useful for: philosophy of cinema

18. The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography by Jennifer Nash
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-black-body-in-ecstasy
b. Nash argues that critical theorizing on art so often erases the possibility of radically complicit – rather than oppositional or disidentificatory – pleasures.
c. Useful for: phil of porn, phil of cinema, pleasure and aesthetic experience

19. Black and Blue by Fred Moten
a. https://www.dukeupress.edu/black-and-blur
b. Over a decade after In The Break, Moten returned to aesthetics with a new, looser, masterpiece that reimagines much of the earlier text. If you want a text that argues Glenn Gould is (in a bizarre, mystical, contradictory way) black....here ya go
c. Useful for: literally everything related to aesthetics

20. Blues People: Negro Music in White America by Amiri Baraka
a. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/blues-people-leroi-jones?variant=32131126591522
b. Speaking of mythic texts, I think Blues People is in many ways the ur-text (even if not chronologically) of black aesthetics. A legendary account of not just black music, but the fundamental entanglement of white america and black aesthetics.
c. Essential for: everything, seriously, but most obviously philosophy of music