Table of Contents

Introduction: Rethinking Beauty / Sarah Nuttall 6
Picasso, Africa and the Schemata of Difference / Simon Gikanki 30
Variations on the Beautiful in Congolese Worlds of Sound / Achille Mbembe 94
Two Thoughts of Drawing Beauty / William Kentridge 94
The Place of Beauty: Reflections on Elaine Scarry and Zakes Mda / Rita Barnard 102
Quille Liberte: Art, Beauty and the Grammars of Resistance in Doula / Dominique Malaquais 122
Fresh Stories / Pippa Stein 164
The Love of the Body: Ousmane Sow and Beauty / Els van der Plas 188
Inheritance / Mark Gevisser 204
Let's Eat: Banquet Aesthetics and Social Epicurism / Celestin Monga 224
Let's Cook / Francois Verges 240
On the Slipperiness of Food / Cheryl-Ann Michael 256
Afro-Aesthetics in Brazil / Patricia Pinho 266
Yoruba Aesthetics and Trans-Atlantic Imaginaries / Kamari Maxine Clarke 290
Urban Imaging: The Friche Waiting to Happen / Rodney Place 316
Things Ugly: Ghanaian Popular Painting / Michelle Gilbert 340
Two Stories: Old Man with Garden at the Rear End of Time and The Fat Indian Girl / Mia Couto 372
Seeing the Familiar: Notes on Mia Couto / Isabel Hofmeyr 384
Notes 392
Index 409

Promotional Information

Collection of essays that tackles the question of aesthetics in contemporary Africa and in the African diaspora by considering the relationship between beauty and ugliness.

About the Author

Sarah Nuttall is Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is a coeditor of Senses of Culture: South African Culture Studies; Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa; and Text, Theory, Space: Land, Literature, and History in South Africa and Australia.

Reviews

"Finally, a book that explores African and African diasporic concepts of aesthetics with depth and theoretical sophistication. A marvelous collection of well thought-out and finely crafted essays by a diverse group of scholars, artists, and other practitioners on concepts of beauty and ugliness as they relate to artistic and aesthetic practices in Africa and its diaspora. An important reference book and a must read for the specialist and the general public alike."--Salah M. Hassan, Director, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University