The Promise of Beauty by Mimi Thi Nguyen - 9781478030973

Name: The Promise of Beauty by Mimi Thi Nguyen - 9781478030973
Brand: Duke University Press

Duke University Press

The Promise of BeautyAuthor(s): Mimi Thi Nguyen\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Duke University Press, United States\nImprint: Duke University Press\nISBN-13: 9781478030973, 978-1478030973\nSynopsis\nIn The Promise of Beauty, Mimi Thi Nguyen explores the relationship between the concept of beauty and narratives of crisis and catastrophe. Nguyen conceptualizes beauty, which, she observes, we turn to in emergencies and times of destruction, as a tool to identify and bridge the discrepancy between the world as it is and what it ought to be. Drawing widely from aesthetic and critical theories, Nguyen outlines how beauty-or its lack-points to the conditions that must exist for it to flourish. She notes that an absence of beauty becomes both a political observation and a call to action to transform the conditions of the situation so as to replicate, preserve, or repair beauty. The promise of beauty can then engender a critique of social arrangements and political structures that would set t.