The Difference Aesthetics Makes

<div>In <i>The Difference Aesthetics Makes</i> cultural critic Kandice Chuh asks what the humanities might be and do if organized around what she calls illiberal humanism instead of around the Western European tradition of liberal humanism that undergirds the humanities in their received form. Recognizing that the liberal humanities contribute to the reproduction of the subjugation that accompanies liberalism's definition of the human Chuh argues that instead of defending the humanities as has been widely called for in recent years we should radically remake them. Chuh proposes that the work of artists and writers like Lan Samantha Chang Carrie Mae Weems Langston Hughes Leslie Marmon Silko Allan deSouza Monique Truong and others brings to bear ways of being and knowing that delegitimize liberal humanism in favor of more robust capacious and worldly senses of the human and the humanities. Chuh presents the aesthetics of illiberal humanism as vital to the creation of sensibilities and worlds capable of making life and lives flourish.</div>