Race and Visual Culture in Global Times

(Hardback)

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The world of images is radically challenging our understanding of race and politics. This book examines the changing representation of race and ethnicity in the visual culture of the first decade of the 21st century - a period marked by the traumas of 9/11, the 'war on terror', and the crisis of neoliberal capitalism. Through this exploration the author highlights the contradictions of a media culture in which discourses of multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and cultural hybridity are juxtaposed with images of Islamophobia, ethnic nationalism and anti-immigrant racism. In contrast to dominant approaches the book situates racial, postcolonial, diasporic and feminist aesthetics in relation to shifts in global capitalism, class and commodity culture.Through an analysis of global news media, independent film, television drama, Hollywood cinema, science fiction, horror, photography, experimental digital art and pop culture it affirms the continued political significance of the visual and the body in contemporary culture.

Author Bio

Ashwani Sharma is Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Film and Screen Studies at the London College of Communication (LCC), University of the Arts London (UAL). Ashwani is a founding editor of darkmatter journal http://www.darkmatter101.org where he has edited a number of special issues including on the TV series The Wire, and Post-racial Imaginaries. He is the co-editor of Disorienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Music (1997). He writes and performs poetry, has worked in the BBC and independent film in sound, and has been an aeronautical engineer.