WIN $150 GIFT VOUCHERS: ALADDIN'S GOLD
Grant H. Kester is Professor of Art History at the University of California, San Diego, author of The Sovereign Self: Aesthetic Autonomy from the Enlightenment to the Avant-Garde and The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, and coeditor of Collective Situations: Readings in Contemporary Latin American Art, 1995–2010, all also published by Duke University Press.
“In a superlative demonstration of a hypothesis in action, Grant H. Kester’s definitive study Beyond the Sovereign Self effectively melts down, then reimagines our stagnated concepts of aesthetic autonomy and avant-gardism in a dauntless bid to retheorize the increasingly entangled, if not indistinguishable, realms of twenty-first-century social activism and art.” -- Gregory Sholette, author of * The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art * “With characteristic thoroughness, Grant H. Kester articulates the radical potential in challenging the cherished notion of art’s autonomy. Centering dialogic and activist art practices, he insightfully argues that the social labor of cultural resistance necessarily operates in generative forms of collectivity and dissensus.” -- Jennifer A. González, coeditor of * Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology * “Beyond the Sovereign Self serves to clear the space for another kind of art history, one focused on dialogical, not dialectical, approaches. In a world where subaltern subjects are more empowered than ever to speak, he reminds artists and art historians of the need to listen.” -- John Zarobell * Theory & Event * ""[Kester's] passion for this topic and his commitment to research is evident, and this title will serve as a record as we see the world change along with the next generation of artists."" -- Eboni Jones-Stewart * ARLIS/NA *
