The Promise of Beauty

In The Promise of Beauty, Mimi Thi Nguyen explores the relationship between the concept of beauty and narratives of crisis and catastrophe. Nguyen conceptualizes beauty, which, she observes, we turn to in emergencies and times of destruction, as a tool to identify and bridge the discrepancy between the world as it is and what it ought to be. Drawing widely from aesthetic and critical theories, Nguyen outlines how beauty-or its lack-points to the conditions that must exist for it to flourish. She notes that an absence of beauty becomes both a political observation and a call to action to transform the conditions of the situation so as to replicate, preserve, or repair beauty. The promise of beauty can then engender a critique of social arrangements and political structures that would set the foundations for its possibility and presence. In this way, Nguyen highlights the role of beauty in inspiring action toward a more just world.

Mimi Thi Nguyen is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, author of The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, and coeditor of Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader, both also published by Duke University Press.