“Anteaesthetics is the study of black aesthetics I didn't know I sorely needed. Bradley offers a razor-sharp and sumptuous meditation on black aesthetics in, through, and vestibular to an anti-black world.”
—Alexander Ghedi Weheliye, Brown University
“Rizvana Bradley's searching theory of black aesthesis traces black art's recursions through the violent origins of the aesthetic. Anteaesthetics opens a mode of reading for black art's non-instrumental exploration of abyssal descent. An incisive and energizing book through and through.”
—Rei Terada, University of California, Irvine
“In this brilliantly conceived and exquisitely rendered study, Bradley offers a path-breaking analysis that will revolutionize how we approach, contest, and undo the Western visual field. Anteaesthetics offers an indispensable and undisciplined new frame for black feminist theorizing.”
—Huey Copeland, University of Pennsylvania
“Incisive and compelling, Bradley's Anteaesthetics restores to thought and feeling a capacious sense of the aesthetic, revealing its tremendous and violent power as nothing less than foundational to a racially typified modern world.”
—Shane Denson, Stanford University
“Anteaesthetics limns the depths of aesthetic and semiotic violence, refocusing our theoretical vision. This is an indispensable text—a tour de force.”
—Calvin Warren, Emory University
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2023
INVENTIONS: BLACK PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AESTHETICS
DAVID MARRIOTT, SERIES EDITOR