On the Politics of Ugliness

Ugliness or unsightliness is much more than a quality or property of an individual’s appearance—it has long functioned as a social category that demarcates access to social, cultural, and political spaces and capital. The editors of and authors in this collection harness intersectional and interdisciplinary approaches in order to examine ugliness as a political category that is deployed to uphold established notions of worth and entitlement. On the Politics of Ugliness identifies and challenges the harmful effects that labels and feelings of ugliness have on individuals and the socio-political order. It explores ugliness in relation to the intersectional processes of racialization, colonization and settler colonialism, gender-making, ableism, heteronormativity, and fatphobia. On the Politics of Ugliness asks that we fight against visual injustice and imagine new ways of seeing.

• Ugliness Theory
• Ugliness and Identity Politics
• Normative Bodies
• Fat Politics
• Feminist Art Practice
• beauty
• disability
• lookism
• visual injustice
• critical disability studies

“A major strength of the book lies in its employment of numerous methodologies in the study of a wide variety of topics around the embodiment of ugliness … . which makes this book a unique work of political theory, broadly construed. … On the Politics of Ugliness is a timely book with many layers and complex analyses that raise original points alongside some artistic expressions that provide a lot of depth to the subject matter.” (Fulden İbrahimhakkıoğlu, Affilia, June 18, 2021)

• Toronto, ON, Canada

  Sara Rodrigues

• Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada

  Ela Przybylo

Sara Rodrigues is a researcher and writer based in Toronto, Canada. She holds a PhD in Social and Political Thought (York University). Her research program focuses on phenomenological and poststructuralist engagements with the body, embodiment and body practices. Her work has appeared in Human Studies, Sexualities and International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, among others. She is a Founding Editor of Feral Feminisms.

Ela Przybylo is a Ruth Wynn Woodward Postdoctoral Fellow and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Ela’s work on asexuality has appeared in GLQ, Sexualities, Feminism & Psychology, in Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, and in Introducing the New Sexuality Studies, Third Edition. Ela is also a proud Founding and Advisory Editor of the peer-reviewed, open access, inter-media online journal, Feral Feminisms.

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