Duke University Press Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Art History Publication Initiative)

In Insurgent Aesthetics Ronak K. Kapadia theorizes the world-making power of contemporary art responses to US militarism in the Greater Middle East. He traces how new forms of remote killing, torture, confinement, and surveillance have created a distinctive post-9/11 infrastructure of racialized state violence. Linking these new forms of violence to the history of American imperialism and conquest, Kapadia shows how Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic multimedia artists force a reckoning with the US war on terror's violent destruction and its impacts on immigrant and refugee communities. Drawing on an eclectic range of visual, installation, and performance works, Kapadia reveals queer feminist decolonial critiques of the US security state that visualize subjugated histories of US militarism and make palpable what he terms “the sensorial life of empire.” In this way, these artists forge new aesthetic and social alliances that sustain critical opposition to the global war machine and create alternative ways of knowing and feeling beyond the forever war. Review "Kapadia has done profound justice to the cultural workers that he features--and his book is a welcome contribution to knowledge production and a living example of what true intersectional scholarship looks like.... Insurgent Aesthetics is itself aesthetically breathtakingly beautiful as a text--and insurgent."--Sa'ed Atshan "Arab Studies Quarterly" (1/1/2021 12:00:00 AM) " Insurgent Aesthetics is a dazzling contribution to a number of fields. . . . It is a model of scholarly composition, depth and breadth, grace and nuance. It would also be a welcome model for students and scholars across the humanities for its organization, style, substance, analysis, and beauty. But more importantly, Kapadia's queer calculus is a methodology that can help ensure we don't become numb from the gas that now governs so much of the world and shows us that our tears may lead to some, new unknown place of collective freedom for all."--Stephen Dillon "Cultural Studies" (12/3/2020 12:00:00 AM) " Insurgent Aesthetics's argument about the violence of visuality and the capacity of artists to rethink the aesthetics of warfare track through the entire book; however, each chapter and all the art objects feel fresh and different from the previous. The arguments are sustained also by the inclusion of many colour images from each artist discussed. The book belongs in visual, art, media and performance studies classrooms, as much as in social science contexts studying globalisation, war and imperialism."--Kareem Khubchandani "Bioscope" (11/30/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Fascinating and innovative.... Kapadia's book is beautifully constructed not only intellectually in the breadth and depth of its analyses but also physically: it is richly illustrated with many of the artistic works that he discusses, a number in full-colour plates.... What is perhaps most important about the book is its insistence that art does not only offer critical perspectives on surveillance and securitization but also brings out the extent to which surveillance practices are themselves inextricably grounded in visual and aesthetic practices."--Robert Heynen "Surveillance & Society" (12/1/2020 12:00:00 AM) "There is much to be learned from Kapadia, whose ambitious monograph traffics between a profound appreciation for the ramifications of US imperialism, an eye for congruencies between divergent strains of comparative ethnic studies, and an enthusiasm for the critical talents of minoritarian cultural production."--Eric Vazquez "Lateral" (10/1/2020 12:00:00 AM) " Insurgent Aesthetics is a theoretically-rich piece of cultural studies. ... The book o?ers a powerful reading of art inspired by, and produced during, the post-9/11 era of US military aggression and colonization."--Brian Donovan "Ethnic and Racial Studies" (5/1/2020 12:00:00 AM) "At its core, Insurgent Aesthetics reminds us that war and security are