From the author of How to See the World comes a new history of white supremacist ways of seeing-and a strategy for dismantling them.
From the author of How to See the World comes a new history of white supremacist ways of seeing-and a strategy for dismantling them.
White supremacy is not only perpetuated by laws and police but also by visual culture and distinctive ways of seeing. Nicholas Mirzoeff argues that this form of ""white sight"" has a history. By understanding that it was not always a common practice, we can devise better ways to dismantle it. Spanning centuries across this wide-ranging text, Mirzoeff connects Renaissance innovations-from the invention of perspective and the erection of Apollo statues as monuments to (white) beauty and power to the rise of racial capitalism dependent on slave labor-with the ever-expanding surveillance technologies of the twenty-first century to show that white sight creates an oppressively racializing world, in which subjects who do not appear as white are under constant threat of violence.
Analyzing recent events like the George Floyd protests and the Central Park birdwatching incident, Mirzoeff suggests that we are experiencing a general crisis of white supremacy that presents both opportunities and threats to social justice. If we do not seize this moment to dismantle white sight, then white supremacy might surge back stronger than ever. To that end, he highlights activist interventions to strike the power of the white heteropatriarchal gaze. White Sight is a vital handbook and call to action for anyone who refuses to live under white-dominated systems and is determined to find a just way to see the world.
By:
Nicholas Mirzoeff
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 567g
ISBN: 9780262047678
ISBN 10: 0262047675
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 18 April 2023
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledged (vii) Introduction: The Strike Against Whiteness (1) Part I: White Sight in the World of Atlantic Slavery 1 The City, Ship, and Plantation (29) 2 The World of Statues in the Americas (59) 3 The Natural History of White Supremacy (93) Part II: Imperial Visions, Anticolonial Ways of Seeing 4 The Imperial Screen (123) 5 The Anticolonial Way of Seeing (149) 6 The Cultural Unconscious and the Dispossessed (177) Part III: The Crisis of Whiteness 7 The Strike Against Statues (197) 8 The General Crisis of Whiteness (227) Acknowledgments (265) Notes (267) Bibliography (291) Index (325)
Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. His many books include the best-selling How to See the World and The Right to Look, and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, Hyperallergic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Reviews for White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness
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