Experiments in Exile - (Commonalities) by Laura Harris (Paperback)

About the Book

A comparative analysis of the radical aesthetic and social experiments undertaken by two exile intellectuals who studied and attempted to carry forward the radical dissidence of the aesthetic and social practices they encountered in the predominantly black slums of Trinidad and Brazil.

Book Synopsis

Comparing radical experiments undertaken by Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James and Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, Experiments in Exile charts their common desire to reconceive citizenship. Laura Harris shows how James and Oiticica gravitate toward and attempt to relay the ongoing renewal of dissident, dissonant social forms that constitute what she calls "the aesthetic sociality of blackness," in the barrack-yards of Port-of-Spain and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the assembly lines of Detroit and the streets of the New York, ultimately challenging rather than rehabilitating normative conceptions of citizens and polities as well as authors and artworks.

Review Quotes

Experiments in Exile generates brilliant insights... It is a text written in its moment but that contains theoretical, political, and aesthetic resources predicated upon a tomorrow world that needs collective, collaborative building and attendant values of comradeship. It is an exemplary model of radical, analysis (undoing), and care.

-- "American Literary History"

[A] well-crafted and thought-provoking work...-- "New West Indian Guide"

The first response of many readers may be to wonder what on earth links C.L.R. James and Hélio Oiticica This book's critical themes of the motley crew, of theorizing issues of contact, of aesthetic sociality all answer the question well. What is crucial is that two such disparate characters, both contending with issues of exile, illegality and citizenship, each developed similar strategies for understanding culture and for projecting a future (even futuristic in Oiticica's case) potential.---Aldon Lynn Nielsen, The Pennsylvania State University

About the Author

Laura Harris is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Art and Public Policy at New York University.