On the Politics of Ugliness ed. by Sara Rodrigues and Ela Przybylo (review)

In On the Politics of Ugliness, disability researchers Sarah Rodrigues and Ela Przybylo produce a volume deeply engaged with embodiment across topics of disability and sexuality representing a diverse range of disciplinary approaches, including anthropology, sociology, and art history. In their introductory chapter, Rodrigues and Przybylo frame their central argument: that ugliness has functioned to mark more abruptly differences of ability, class, and race. They question the theoretical alignment between goodness and beauty and posit that we must consider ugliness within a political argument about who has been made to feel welcome or unwelcome, especially in public space. Cultural preference for the cis-male non-disabled, white, upper class, thin, healthy, straight, young person is created, they argue, through the vilification of its implicit opposite: ugliness. They explicitly connect aesthetic judgment to political oppression, writing that “dirt is a concept historically racialized and classed, and the expulsion of that which is dirty parallels the goals of empire building and white supremacy” (5).

A central claim of the book’s different chapters is that the accusation of monstrosity is also wielded along the lines of these other axes of oppression. Rodrigues and Przybylo further make the case for a study of ugliness by explaining that understanding ugliness can be used to better conceptualize the way differing amounts of social capital accrue on the body through various identities. Ugliness is noteworthy because of its fundamentally social nature, its subjectivity, and its use in relation to other categories. Thus, the editors in their positioning of the volume make a strong case that such “considerations of ugliness [are] significant also to critical disability studies and the politics of seeing and being seen,” referencing Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s Staring: How We Look, and showing how looking is a mode of policing normality (17). Ultimately, the editors use the collected chapters to position ugliness as a possible mobilizing and inspiring political and artistic force, with strong generative potential.

While the introduction makes this case, there are limitations to the efficacy of its argument. When Rodrigues and Przybylo outline how Julia Kristeva describes the abject as a reminder to others that they “likely will become, ugly, unruly, and out of place at one or many points in life,” they allude to the notion of all able-bodiedness being temporary but do not develop the connection adequately (5). Although literature on temporary able-bodiedness reminds readers of the fragility and conditionality of any embodied ability, Rodrigues and Przybylo could more fully integrate this scholarship into their literature review and expand on their quoting of Kristeva to provide a clearer point.

Nevertheless, a few particularly strong chapters wrestle with the sociality of ugliness within the structural framework of the text. In a chapter titled “‘Put on All Your Make-Up and Cry It Off in Public’: The Function of Ugliness in Femme Grieving Practices,” Andi Schwartz describes the process by which marginalized Tumblr content creators use their platforms, expressing their grief and “ugliness,” to shed light on marginalization. Schwartz discusses both the content itself as well as the resistance community formed through posts. She uses her expertise on digital space and online subcultures to break new ground in considering what might be called an “ugly politic.” Her engagement with Michael Warner’s scholarship on publics and counterpublics considers how mechanisms of the Tumblr platform like user suggestions and hashtags help similarly minded users congregate and build political power. This chapter makes a fresh contribution at the intersection of digital studies and gender studies and contends that communities such as trans disabled fat femmes of color are launching significant political work from the digital platform.

Artist Vivek Shraya contributes a chapter called “I Want to Kill Myself” that includes photographs and text interwoven to create a first-person narrative about her own depression. A particularly fascinating piece of the work is the line “Can the desire to die be inherited?”, asked by the author/narrator...