Beauty is in the Mind of the Oppressor: The Black Male Corpse as the Vestibule to the Sublime by Tommy J. Curry

Much has been made of the distinctions between that which is beautiful and that which is sublime throughout the philosophy of aesthetics. Traditionally, the death of a human being is understood to be a tragedy, a horror that is often to grotesque to be viewed by the public. In the case of the Black male, this historically has not been the case. Throughout history, the Black male corpse has indicated the triumph of white civilization, white morality, and the protection of womanhood. The dead Black male body was considered sublime, an example of a seemingly corporeal horror and mutilation that conveys an eternal (transcendental) truth. It conveys that the living Black male—be he an adult male or boy—is incompatible with all that is naturally beautiful, good, and true in the white world. This presentation asks how white European culture has conceptualized the sublime through the murder, lynching, castration, and mutilation of Black males throughout the centuries. The author will argue that the Black male is but one example of how the racialized/subjugated male corpse has been (and is) a source of aesthetic creativity for colonizing and imperial populations.

BIO: Tommy J. Curry joined the Philosophy Department at the University of Edinburgh in the Fall of 2019. His research interests are in Africana Philosophy and the Black Radical Tradition. His areas of specialization are: 19th century ethnology, Critical Race Theory, Social Political Theory, and Black Male Studies. He is the author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press 2017), which won the 2018 American Book Award. He is the author of Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of Racial Empire (SUNY Press 2018), and has re-published the forgotten philosophical works of William Ferris as The Philosophical Treatise of William H. Ferris: Selected Readings from The African Abroad or, His Evolution in Western Civilization (Rowman & Littlefield 2016). He is also the editor of the first book series dedicated to the study of Black males entitled Black Male Studies: A Series Exploring the Paradoxes of Racially Subjugated Males on Temple University Press.