My new book, Too Black to Fail: The Obama Portraits and the Politics of Post-Representation is now available from Red Quill Books. Unfortunately I did not manage to get this book to print before the U.S. tour of the exhibition of the Obama portraits. The people have the right to know that what they are seeing is not royalty. This book is available as a print-on-demand title only.
TABLE OF CONTENTS / Preface / INTRODUCTION ( amnesia about the Obama administrations ) / CHAPTER 1. A Trap for the Gaze: An Effect of Grace ( the unveiling of the Obama portraits and media response ) – Can’t Knock the Hustle – The Brass Menagerie ( presidential portraiture ) – Dogs Playing Poker – The Science of Imaginary Solutions ( a theory of post-representation ) – We Tortured Some Folks / CHAPTER 2. From Obamarama to the Drone Presidency: Dark Horse – Too Big to Fail – Too Big to Jail – That Creed Reaffirmed / CHAPTER 3. Woke Aesthetics: The Artsy Vanguard ( the ideas and work of Amy Sherald ) – Viewing Habits ( the Breonna Taylor cover ) – Kehinde Wiley, Genius ( the ideas and work of Kehinde Wiley ) – Ghetto Life – Brandstorming – Sex, Race, Gender and Bentham – The Souls of One-Dimensional Folk – The Man Who Sold the World – In the Court of Charles V ( the work of Zanny Begg and Elise McLeod ) / CHAPTER 4. Racialism and Its Discontents: The Activists ( i.e. BLM, Keeanga-Yahmahtta Taylor ) – The Scapegoat ( the white working class ) – The Devil’s Advocates ( Touré Neblett, John McWhorter ) – The Managers ( Johnny Bernard Hill, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michael Eric Dyson, Michelle Alexander ) – The Intellectuals ( not racialist: Cornel West, Walter Benn Michaels, Adolph Reed, Ellen Meiksins Wood ) – The Brokers ( Chris Chen, Asad Haider, Nikhil Pal Singh and Joshua Clover, David Roediger ) – The Freedom Fighters Were Here ( so-called cultural Marxism, Sven Lutticken, Barbara and Karen Fields ) / CHAPTER 5. Black Capitalism and Embedded History: Worthy Causes – My President – Heavenly Compulsions – Dreams From Beyoncé – Not My President – Mojo Morality – You Ain’t Got No Alibi – The Umpteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ( celebrity culture, woke-washing, political marketing, branding and cross-platforming, the George Washington High School murals, the 1619 Project, zoological materialism ) / CONCLUSION ( racial capitalism, diversity populism )
DESCRIPTION: In the past several decades, progressive leftists have gradually replaced socialism with single-issue coalitions and populist criticism of elites. As global economic crisis deepens, the spectre of both the radical left and the extreme right have re-emerged. Max Horkheimer famously stated that whoever does not criticize capitalism has nothing to say about fascism. With a focus on the American scene, Too Black to Fail adds to this the argument that whoever does not criticize identity politics has nothing to say about capitalism. Taking the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama as a touchstone for the contradictions of our era, Léger questions the Obama legacy in relation to the neoliberalization of society and culture. Arguing for the renewal of emancipatory universalism, Too Black to Fail makes an unsparing critique of woke aesthetics and black capitalism, drawing the connections between today’s racialist agenda and the ideology of post-representation.
COVER ARTWORK BY THEODORE A. HARRIS, facts in the ground series