On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value

by Alessandra Raengo (Brand)

In this landmark work of critical theory, black studies, and visual culture studies, Alessandra Raengo boldly reads race as a theory of the image. By placing emphasis on the surface of the visual as the repository of its meaning, race presents the most enduring ontological approach to what images are, how they feel, and what they mean. Having established her theoretical concerns, the author’s eclectic readings of various artifacts of visual culture, fine arts, cinema, and rhetorical tropes provoke and destabilize readers’ visual comfort zone, forcing them to recognize the unstated racial aspects of viewing and the foundational role of race in informing the visual.

Hardcover is un-jacketed.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Alessandra Raengo teaches in the Moving Image Studies doctoral program at Georgia
State University, USA. Her research focuses on blackness in the visual and aesthetic fields. She is the author of On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value, and coordinator of liquid blackness, a research project on blackness and aesthetics.

Reviews

[Ayanna Dozier · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the light of the events that have transpired in Ferguson and New York over the past two months, Raengo's assessment of the face value that blackness plays in intersubjective relationship hold a timely resonance in our society. Published around the time as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney's The Undercommons, readers who have read that can see the interdisciplinary pool of critical institutional resistance within her work. This is evident as she effortlessly constructs a compelling argument concerning the visibility of blackness that is generally governed by institutional thought in visual culture. A must read for any time, but the sting of the effect of race as face value (what Raengo argues against) feels particularly strong when reading it now.