Race and Visual Culture in Global Times

The world of images is radically challenging our understanding of race and politics. This book examines the changing representation of race and ethnicity in the visual culture of the first decade of the 21st century - a period marked by the traumas of 9/11, the 'war on terror', and the crisis of neoliberal capitalism. Through this exploration the author highlights the contradictions of a media culture in which discourses of multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and cultural hybridity are juxtaposed with images of Islamophobia, ethnic nationalism and anti-immigrant racism.

In contrast to dominant approaches the book situates racial, postcolonial, diasporic and feminist aesthetics in relation to shifts in global capitalism, class and commodity culture.Through an analysis of global news media, independent film, television drama, Hollywood cinema, science fiction, horror, photography, experimental digital art and pop culture it affirms the continued political significance of the visual and the body in contemporary culture.