Ewa Plonowska Ziarek is Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Buffalo. Her most recent book is Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism (Columbia 2012). Her research interests include feminist theory, modernism, and critical race theory.
Ewa Ziarek
Contributions
Towards a Transformative Feminist Aesthetics: Antagonism, Commodification, and the “Racial Contract” in Larsen’s “Sanctuary”
My approach to feminist aesthetics in modernism takes as one point of departure an ongoing critical negotiation with Theodor Adorno’s theory of heteronomous autonomy of art in the context of feminism and race theory. This approach is not without its risks, as it has to confront and struggle with the persisting racial and gender exclusions even in the more progressive Western intellectual traditions.