Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Black aesthetics and Adornian aesthetics both articulate and embody what Hortense Spillers calls the "critical edge" of culture and art, and there is a recent history of black aestheticians engaging creatively with Adorno. Today, however, any constructive dialogue between these aesthetic traditions depends on whether Adorno's aesthetics can be decoupled from the anti-black racism in the genealogy of Western aesthetics and whether Adorno's negative dialectics can be reconciled to the transformative force of art, as that force is as central in black aesthetics as is the negative dialectics of art. Critically focusing on Adorno's discussion of "the ideal of blackness" in Aesthetic Theory, this article will argue that such decoupling remains incomplete, that he resolutely did not believe in the transformative force of art, and that these issues are connected, at least in Adorno's case. This article simultaneously demonstrates how black thinkers—Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Angela Y. Davis, Fred Moten, Fumi Okiji, and Spillers—have long offered exemplary accounts of art that combine its negative dialectics, critical edge, and transformative force while defying the anti-black racism in Western aesthetics.

This is the introductory editorial to a special issue in honour of former editor of French Cultural Studies, Nicholas Hewitt (NH). It includes some reflections on the author's collaboration with NH and on the process of founding the journal in the late 1980s. It outlines the themes discussed in the nine substantive articles especially around the guiding theme of the sense of place, which NH did much to inspire.

This article introduces the special issue of the journal on France as a Laboratory of Culture. It asks whether France continues to foster creativity and innovation in the cultural realm. Six articles examine case studies, including the role of women in the making of modern Paris, France's role in world cinema through international co-production, French conceptions of world literature, recent fictional works by Alice Zeniter and Bessora, the rapper Abd al Malik as a complex example of hybrid music, and the state-funded project to create ÉcoQuartiers, or green neighbourhoods. These examples provide challenges to the way things are, whether in changing behaviours, tastes, perceptions or understandings, and demonstrate convincingly that France remains a vibrant laboratory of culture in the modern world.