Way Too Cool - Selling Out Race and Ethics

Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-231-17294-3
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 151 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 448 g

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of cool have informed the American ethos since at least the 1970s. Whether we strive for it in politics or fashion, cool is big business for those who can sell it across a range of markets and media. Yet the concept wasn't always a popular commodity. Cool began as a potent aesthetic of post-World War II black culture, embodying a very specific, highly charged method of resistance to white supremacy and the globalized exploitation of capital.

Way Too Cool follows the hollowing-out of "coolness" in modern American culture and its reflection of a larger evasion of race, racism, and ethics now common in neoliberal society. It revisits such watershed events as the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, second-wave feminism, the emergence of identity politics, 1980s multiculturalism, 1990s rhetorics of diversity and colorblindness, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the contemporaneous developments of rising mass incarceration and legalized same-sex marriage. It pairs the perversion of cool with the slow erasure of racial and ethical issues from our social consciousness, which effectively quashes our desire to act ethically and resist abuses of power. The cooler we become, the more indifferent we grow to the question of values, particularly inquiry that spurs protest and conflict. This book sounds an alarm for those who care about preserving our ties to an American tradition of resistance.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Winnubst, Shannon

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziale Ungleichheit, Armut, Rassismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Menschenrechte, Bürgerrechte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: A Very Uncool Book1. Excavating Categories: Foucault's Birth of BiopoliticsInterlude 1: Old School Cool2. Rethinking Difference: The Limits of InterpellationInterlude 2: Instant Cool!3. From Instant Karma to Instant Wealth: The Fantasies and Cathexes of These Neoliberal TimesInterlude 3: Neoliberal Cool4. "How Cool Is That?": Gender and the Neoliberal ImaginaryInterlude 4: The Birth of Cool5. Reading Race as the Real: The Securities and Punishments of Neoliberal CoolInterlude 5: Real Cool, Now6. Stop Making Sense: The Aporia of Race and EthicsNotesBibliographyIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Shannon Winnubst is professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at the Ohio State University. She is the author of Queering Freedom and editor of Reading Bataille Now.