Synthesizing emerging theories of aesthetic action in relation to literary and art criticism

Drawing attention to what critical theorist Heather Love identifies as “the micro,” contemporary artists use small materials and cross‑media methods to elicit interpretation and foster critical engagement, immersing audiences in the entangled relations engendered with near and distant others through artistic experience. Small Aesthetics analyzes this insurgent tradition in twentieth- and twenty‑first-century poetry and art to show how it confronts the challenges of creating mutually sustaining lives. Feminist and feminist‑of‑color theorists have long argued that acts of care take on critical force when they foreground collective well-being and solidarity across power, class, and cultural differences. Guided by their insights, Nate Mickelson proposes that literary and visual artworks elicit acts of caring attention that engage audiences in their responsibilities to tend to the collective structures through which their lives unfold. Through his close readings, he extends the “post‑critical turn” in literary and art criticism and demonstrates the urgent vitality of feminist, Black, Latine, queer, and trans lives in increasingly hostile social contexts.

NATE MICKELSON is a clinical professor and the director of faculty development in the Expository Writing Program at New York University.

Introduction: Small Aesthetics in Theory 

Part I. Materials 

Chapter 1: Sounds 

Chapter 2: Surfaces 

Chapter 3: Relations 

Part II. Methods 

Chapter 4: Assembling Encounters 

Chapter 5: Making Resistant Knowledge 

Chapter 6: Composing in the Future Particular 

Conclusion: Showing Up 

Acknowledgments

Notes 

Bibliography 

Index