On the Politics of Ugliness

by Sara Rodrigues (Editor), Ela Przybylo (Editor)

Ugliness or unsightliness is much more than a quality or property of an individual’s appearance―it has long functioned as a social category that demarcates access to social, cultural, and political spaces and capital. The editors of and authors in this collection harness intersectional and interdisciplinary approaches in order to examine ugliness as a political category that is deployed to uphold established notions of worth and entitlement. On the Politics of Ugliness identifies and challenges the harmful effects that labels and feelings of ugliness have on individuals and the socio-political order. It explores ugliness in relation to the intersectional processes of racialization, colonization and settler colonialism, gender-making, ableism, heteronormativity, and fatphobia. On the Politics of Ugliness asks that we fight against visual injustice and imagine new ways of seeing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Disability, Philosophy, Gender, Eugenics, Gender and Sexuality

433 pages, Hardcover

Published August 30, 2018

Reviews

[Corey]

Really thought-provoking edited volume. I got this to read Natasha Lushitech’s chapter, which was great, but then couldn’t stop reading the others. I found it interesting to think about ugliness and “visual injustice” from the intersectional approach this book takes

[Sara G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a book to be reread, very well structured and devoting quite a lot of space to the connection between the social concept of ugliness and disability.

[Hana "Nara"]

“If one originated in the other, it is beauty that originated in the ugly, and not the reverse.” - Adorno, T. W.

***

What I remember from On Beauty and Being Just is how beauty, through its characters—harmony, symmetry, balance, fair(ness), and just(ness)—shaped laws. Yet, the collection of academic essays in this book shows how "beauty" itself can be the cause of cruelty to those who or what are deemed as "ugly".

Once we take the definition of beauty/ugliness out of the aesthetic limitation, beauty/ugliness is political. Authorities has always been trying to repress what they see as unfamiliar, odd, formless, grotesque, hideous, horrid—the attributes of ugliness. What is considered as beauty, comes from what authorities allow; beauty is "an exclusionary, elitist, and oppressive category forged by the dominant orders and forced on the people." [p.33]. In other words, the categorization of beauty and ugliness is part of social control.