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ON
THE
PO L I T I C S
OF
U G L I NE S S
EDITED BY
SARA RODRIGUES
AND
EL A PRZYBYLO
On the Politics of Ugliness
Sara Rodrigues • Ela Przybylo
Editors
On the Politics
of Ugliness
Editors
Sara Rodrigues Ela Przybylo
Toronto, ON, Canada Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, BC, Canada
ISBN 978-3-319-76782-6 ISBN 978-3-319-76783-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76783-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935188
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the
whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or
information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does
not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective
laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are
believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors
give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions
that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: “Thank You For The Syphilis,” mixed media and collage on mylar. Sarah Allen Eagen, artist,
http://saraheagen.com/.
Cover design by Tom Howey
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International
Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Introduction: On the Politics of Ugliness 1

Ela Przybylo and Sara Rodrigues
2 Ugliness 31
Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer
Part I Desire, Relationality, Erotics 51
3 Listening to the Ugliness of Hetero-Erotic Miscommunication

in Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms 53
Yetta Howard
4 “Put on All Your Make-Up and Cry It Off in Public:”

The Function of Ugliness in Femme Grieving Practices 69
Andi Schwartz
5 I Want to Kill Myself 91

Vivek Shraya
6 The Lesson of the Cockroach: Towards an Ethics of Ugliness 103

Esther Hutfless and Elisabeth Schäfer
v
vi Contents
Part II The Spatio-Temporalities of Ugliness 125
7 (Un)Mapping the City Beautiful: Orlando Florida’s “Ugly”

Settler Colonial Legacy 127
Stephanie K. Wheeler
8 New Body Project(s): “Excess” Skin in the Context of Massive

Weight Loss 151
Yasmina Katsulis
9 The Indiscreet Charms of Spatial Ugliness: An Enquiry into

a (Post)colonial City 171
Sayandeb Chowdhury
10 Stigma Stains: The Somaesthetics of Institutional Abjection 193

Natasha Lushetich
Part III Materialities and Representations 217
11 Agatha’s Breasts on a Plate: “Ugliness” as Resistance

and Queerness 219
Bernadette Wegenstein
12 Imagining Ugliness: Failed Femininities, Shame, and Disgust

Written Onto the “Other” Body 237
Breanne Fahs
13 Ugliness as Colonial Violence: Mediations of Murdered

and Missing Indigenous Women 259
Katherine Morton
14 Writing Ugly 291
Melody Ellis
15 Butler’s Monsters: The Grotesque and the Black Communal

Body in Octavia Butler’s Dawn 309
Jalondra A. Davis
Contents
vii
Part IV Ugliness as Generative Power 335
16 On the Limitations of the Rhetoric of Beauty: Embracing

Ugliness in Contemporary Fat Visual Representations 337
Stefanie Snider
17 The Ugly, the Uninvited, and the Unseen in the Work of Sia
and Emma Sulkowicz 367
Karina Eileraas Karakuş
18 Teaching While Ugly: A Story of Racial Pulchritude,

Privilege, and Pedagogy 389
Michael Johnson, Jr.
19 The Ugly Gaze 411

Shannon Bell
Index 427
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors

Ela Przybylo is Ruth Wynn Woodward Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender,
Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Przybylo
is the author of Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality
(forthcoming 2019). 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 Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed, open access, inter-
media online journal, Feral Feminisms (http://feralfeminisms.com). Visit her
online at: https://przybyloela.wordpress.com/.
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.
About the Contributors

Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer Born in Athens, Greece, and trained as an art
historian at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and Princeton University,
Athanassoglou-Kallmyer previously taught at the University of Maryland and
the University of Chicago and is currently Professor of Art History, University
ix
x Editors and Contributors
of Delaware. She has published extensively on French nineteenth-century art,

including essays on Gericault, Horace Vernet, Delacroix, and Cezanne, and
three books: French Images from the Greek War of Independence: Art and Politics
under the Restoration (Yale University Press, 1989); Eugene Delacroix: Prints,
Politics, and Satire (Yale University Press, 1991); and Cezanne and Provence:
The Painter in His Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Shannon Bell is Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto,
Canada (http://www.yorku.ca/shanbell/). Her books include: Fast Feminism
(2010); Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body (1994); Whore
Carnival (1995); Bad Attitude/s on Trial (co-authored 1997, reissued 2017);
The Book of Radical General Semantics (co-edited 2016); Subversive Itinerary:
The Thought of Gad Horowitz (co-edited 2013); and New Socialisms (co-edited
2004).
Sayandeb Chowdhury is Assistant Professor, School of Letters, Ambedkar
University Delhi and doctoral fellow, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur
University, Calcutta where he is working on the history and practice of early
photography in and on Calcutta. He was UKNA Fellow at the International
Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden in 2015 and a Charles Wallace India Trust
fellow, 2016. His essays have been published or are forthcoming in Film
International, Journal of South Asian History and Culture, South Asia Review,
The Economic and Political Weekly, European Journal of English Studies, and
thematic anthologies published by Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Karnac
Books, University of Brussels Press, Amsterdam University Press, and
University of Nebraska Press. He also contributes regularly on books, politics
and cinema to leading Indian publications such as Biblio, Indian Express,
Outlook, Business Standard, TheWire.in, The Caravan, and Art India.
Jalondra A. Davis is a black feminist artist-intellectual. She writes, researches,
educates and performs in Los Angeles, California. She holds a BA in English
from Loyola Marymount University, a Master of Professional Writing from
the University of Southern California, and a PhD in Ethnic Studies from
University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on black political
discourse in black/Africana popular literatures and culture, with a focus on
women, gender and sexuality. Her current project “On Queens and Monsters:
Science Fiction and the Black Political Imagination” examines how black
women’s speculative fiction engages and revises both science fiction tropes and
narrative discourses surrounding black femininity. She is also the author of a
coming-of-age novel entitled Butterfly Jar, about a black girl growing and act-
ing up during the 1992 Los Angeles uprisings. Davis is a lecturer in the
Africana Studies Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
xi
Melody Ellis is a writer and academic based in Melbourne. She completed her
undergraduate studies in fine art at Sydney College of the Arts in 2001, and
in 2014 was awarded a PhD in creative writing from RMIT. Her interdisci-
plinary writing practice explores a preoccupation with desire, place, subjectiv-
ity and psychoanalysis. Ellis’s writing is informed by her practice as an
exhibiting artist and sometimes curator. She recently co-authored a chapter
with Associate Professor Francesca Rendle-Short for The Materiality of Love:
Essays on Affection and Cultural Practice (Routledge 2017).
Breanne Fahs is Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State
University, where she specializes in studying women’s sexuality, critical
embodiment studies, radical feminism, and political activism. She has pub-
lished widely in feminist, social science and humanities journals and has
authored or edited six books: Performing Sex (SUNY Press, 2011), The Moral
Panics of Sexuality (Palgrave, 2013), Valerie Solanas (Feminist Press, 2014),
Out for Blood (SUNY Press, 2016), Transforming Contagion (Rutgers University
Press, 2018), and Firebrand Feminism (University of Washington Press, 2018).
She is the director of the Feminist Research on Gender and Sexuality Group
at Arizona State University, and she also works as a clinical psychologist in
private practice where she specializes in sexuality, couples work, and trauma
recovery.
Yetta Howard is the author of Ugly Differences: Queer Female Sexuality in the
Underground (University of Illinois Press, 2018) and is editing a photography
and essay collection, Rated RX.: Sheree Rose with and after Bob Flanagan (under
contract with Ohio State University Press) in collaboration with ONE
National Gay and Lesbian Archives. Howard specializes in gender and sexual-
ity studies, queer studies, and feminist theories of race and ethnicity.
Emphasizing visual and auditory texts, her research and teaching focuses on
twentieth- and twenty-first-century American cultural studies with an invest-
ment in underground, experimental and unpopular cultural production.
Some of Howard’s work has also appeared in Social Text; Sounding Out!; TSQ:
Transgender Studies Quarterly; The Journal of Popular Culture; Women &
Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory; and she guest edited a special issue
of Journal of Lesbian Studies on the theme “Under Pressure.”
Esther Hutfless is a philosopher and psychoanalyst in Vienna, Austria. She
teaches at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna and the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Academy. Her main teaching and research areas
include: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Feminist Philosophy, Ontology,
Écriture féminine, and Queer Theory. With Barbara Zach, she edited the first
xii Editors and Contributors
German anthology on queer theory and psychoanalysis Queering Psychoanalysis.

Transdisziplinäre Verschränkungen (Zaglossus, 2017); with Elisabeth Schäfer
she edited Hélène Cixous. Gespräch mit dem Esel (Zaglossus, 2017); and again
with Elisabeth Schäfer and Gertrude Postl edited Hélène Cixous. Das Lachen
der Medusa. Zusammen mit aktuellen Beiträgen (Passagen, 2013). Her work
has also appeared in the Journal für Psychoanalyse.
Michael Johnson, Jr. is currently Associate Lecturer and Advisor for the
Center for Liberal Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside. He also
serves as Vice President of Diversity, Outreach and Inclusion for the Popular
Culture Association, and as lifelong member and former Faculty Adviser for
Gamma Iota Omicron.
Karina Eileraas Karakuş received a BA in Women’s Studies, International
Relations and French from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and was the
first graduate of the PhD program in Women’s Studies at UCLA. She special-
izes in feminist, queer and postcolonial theory; autobiography, diaspora and
cultural memory; visual culture, film, media and performance studies; nation-
alism, sexuality, and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa; and the
relationship between fantasy, violence, and misrecognition. She is currently
revising a paper on the French-Lebanese film “Lila dit ca” and contributing to
a queer archive of Marilyn Monroe, female embodiment, and celebrity cul-
ture. She most recently published an article in Signs on nude protest as femi-
nist site of rage and as means of reformulating the public square with respect
to the Egyptian nude blogger Aliaa al-Mahdy.
Yasmina Katsulis is a medical anthropologist and Associate Professor of
Women and Gender Studies, who joined the Arizona State University faculty
in 2004. She received her doctoral degree in Anthropology from Yale
University (2003), and shortly following, a post-doctoral training position
supported by the National Institute of Health, through Yale’s School of
Epidemiology and Public Health. Katsulis specializes in qualitative and mixed
method research on the structural and social contexts of health disparities,
particularly as they relate to disparities around gender, race, and class among
the most marginalized and vulnerable populations. She has worked with such
diverse populations as sex workers struggling with drug addiction and home-
lessness; the experiences of sex workers involved in diversion programs offered
through the criminal justice system; foster youth; and, more recently, post-
bariatric patients. Katsulis teaches on sexualities, the body, global health, fat
studies, and alcohol and drug use.
xiii
Natasha Lushetich is Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Practices and Visual

Studies at LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore, having previously lectured
at the University of Exeter, UK. Her research focuses on intermedia, art as
philosophy; theories of hegemony; biopolitics; agnotology and micro-
violence; and cultural performance. Among her publications are: Fluxus: The
Practice of Non-Duality (Rodopi 2014); On Game Structures, a special issue of
Performance Research, co-edited with Mathias Fuchs (2016); and
Interdisciplinary Performance Reformatting Reality (Palgrave 2016). Natasha’s
recent writing has also appeared in such cross-disciplinary journals as
Babilónia; Environment, Space, Place; Performance Research; TDR; Text and
Performance Quarterly; The Journal of Somaesthetics; and Total Art Journal, as
well as in a number of edited collections.
Katherine Morton is a PhD candidate in the department of Sociology at
Memorial University of Newfoundland. Born and raised in British Columbia
on unceded Coast Salish territory, Morton specializes in social research related
to Indigenous populations and colonial violence in British Columbia. Her
PhD research identifies points of intersection between violence, Indigenous
identity and colonialism in relation to the material spaces of residential
schools. She examines residential schools as carceral spaces that contradict
Canada’s national sense of self. She completed research in her MA on the
construction of tropes of Indigenous identity and their presence in indige-
nous focused public inquiries. Prior to grad school, Morton held positions in
both the federal and provincial public service researching and providing pol-
icy analysis on Indigenous cultural heritage, the duty to consult and demo-
graphic change. She is the co-president of the CSA Violence and Society
Research Cluster, and she works as an instructor at Memorial University.
Morton’s research interests include violence, g ender, identity politics, critical
theory, colonialism, land claim negotiations and discourse analysis.
Elisabeth Schäfer holds a postdoctoral position in the research project “Artist
Philosophers Philosophy AS Arts-Based Research” [AR 275-G21] sponsored
by the Austrian Science Funds FWF, at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.
She also teaches at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna.
Her main teaching and research areas include: Deconstruction, Queer-
Feminist Philosophy, Écriture féminine, and Philosophy of the body. In 2013
she co-edited with Esther Hutfless and Gertrude Postl the first German trans-
lation of Hélène Cixous’ essay “Le Rire de la Méduse” (Passagen Vienna). In
2017 she published—with Esther Hutfless—“Conversation avec l’ane. Écrire
aveugle” by Hélène Cixous along with two supplementing texts by the editors
and Gertrude Postl (Zaglossus Vienna). Schäfer is currently working on a
xiv Editors and Contributors
habilitation research project on “Trans*Writing Immanence and

Transformation. Towards a Political, Ethical and Aesthetical Theory of Writing
as Arts-based Research.”
Andi Schwartz is a PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies
at York University. She works at the intersection of critical femininities and
digital representations. Her research interests include femme identities and
communities, online subcultures and counterpublics, and radical softness.
Her writing has been published in Broken Pencil, Herizons, Shameless, Daily
Xtra, and Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology.
Vivek Shraya is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the
University of Calgary, and an artist whose body of work includes several albums,
films, and books. Her first book of poetry, even this page is white, won a 2017
Publisher Triangle Award and was longlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads. Her debut
novel, She of the Mountains, was named one of The Globe and Mail’s Best Books,
and her first children’s picture book, The Boy & the Bindi, was featured on the
National Post bestseller list. Shraya has read and performed internationally at
shows, festivals and post-secondary institutions, including sharing the stage with
Tegan & Sara. She is one half of the music duo Too Attached and the founder of
the publishing imprint VS. Books. A four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist,
Shraya was a 2016 Pride Toronto Grand Marshal, and has received honors from
Toronto Arts Foundation and The Writers’ Trust of Canada.
Stefanie Snider is Assistant Professor of Art History at Kendall College of Art
and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she teaches classes in contem-
porary art, history of photography, and race, gender, and sexuality in twenti-
eth- and twenty-first century art. Snider earned her PhD from University of
Southern California and researches contemporary art and visual culture that
focuses on marginalized communities, especially work made by, for, or about
LGBT/queer, fat, and disabled populations. Some of Snider’s work has
appeared in the Journal of Lesbian Studies; More Caught in the Act: An Anthology
of Performance Art by Canadian Women (ed. Johanna Householder and Tanya
Mars, YYZ Books and Artexte Editions, 2016); The Photograph and the Album
(ed. Theresa Wilkie, Jonathan Carson, and Rosie Miller, Museums Etc.,
2013); and The Fat Studies Reader (ed. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay,
New York University Press, 2009). She guest edited an issue of Fat Studies: An
Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society on “Visual Representations
of Fat and Fatness” in 2013. In 2016–17, she won a Travel Research in Equity
Collections Award from the Smithsonian Institution to survey the Disability
Reference Collection at the National Museum of American History. Snider is
xv
currently working on projects about the work of artists Laura Aguilar, Tee
Corinne, and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.
Bernadette Wegenstein is a semiotician, filmmaker, and leading figure in the
emergent field of media theory. In books like Getting Under the Skin: Body and
Media Theory, and The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction
of Beauty, she shows how the most intimate experiences of the human body are
intertwined with the technologies we use to communicate, represent the world,
and envision and diagnose our illnesses. From analyses of literature, the visual
arts, the history of cinema, and the onset of digital technology, Wegenstein’s
work explores how the ways we inhabit our bodies are inextricably bound to
how we desire them to be, and how this desire is thoroughly cosmetic, that is,
structured by the logic of enhancement and improvement. She works and
teaches on Italian cinema, cinematic representations of the Holocaust, and
documentary and experimental film. She is also a documentary filmmaker
with three features, Made Over in America, See You Soon Again and The Good
Breast distributed, another one in post-production, and a fifth one in pre-
production. The Center for Advanced Media Studies, which she directs at
Johns Hopkins University, supports an integrated agenda of research and
media arts production in collaboration with the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Stephanie K. Wheeler is Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing and
Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida. Wheeler’s academic interests
include Cultural Rhetorics, Rhetoric and Writing, Disability Studies,
Indigenous Rhetorics, and Holocaust Studies. She is particularly interested in
the intersections of these areas, specifically the ways that disability and able-
ism are deployed as colonial tools to marginalize and disenfranchise unwanted
bodies.
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 David during orgasm, Twentynine Palms (2003) 61

Fig. 3.2 Katia after the assault, Twentynine Palms (2003) 64
Fig. 4.1 Natalie Perkins, “Ugly Femme Pride” (2011) 72
Fig. 7.1 One of 35 “panhandling rectangles” 134
Fig. 7.2 Box drawn around sidewalk obstacles that restrict panhandler
movement and space 136
Fig. 7.3 Lines that overlap into the street, which could be mistaken for a
blue box 137
Fig. 9.1 An empty Old Court House Street looking south into Esplanade,
the street having emptied itself on the Maidan with the
Ochterlony Monument on the far left. Photo by A. De Hone
(1870s)181
Fig. 9.2 A glimpse of Old Court House Street. Photo by Glen Hensley
(1940s)185
Fig. 9.3 Havoc at a road junction in central Calcutta after communal
riots. British troops had to carry out what was described as an
“extensive military operation” to quieten this area. British Army
vehicles can be seen in the background (1946) 186
Fig. 10.1 River House Ward, Bethlem Royal Hospital (2014), pho
tographer anonymous 197
Fig. 10.2 Patient X’s spatial intervention: Mobile Object, River House
(2014), photographer anonymous 198
Fig. 10.3 Nursing Station Glass, River House (2014), photographer
anonymous199
Fig. 10.4 A set of ward keys, River House (2014), photographer
anonymous203
xvii
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 10.5 Observation Room, River House (2014), photographer

anonymous206
Fig. 11.1 Scenes of the life of Agatha sculpted by Scipionedi Guido,
Cattedrale di Sant’Agata, Catania (late Sixteenth Century).
Photo courtesy of Waystone Productions 221
Fig. 11.2 Tommaso Minardi, “Saint Agatha with Her Breasts on a Charger”
(mid Nineteenth Century). Photo courtesy of Wellcome
Collection: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0 228
Fig. 11.3 ORLAN, Le baiser de l’artiste (1977), reinstalled in 2017 at the
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris. Photo courtesy
of the author 230
Fig. 11.4 Birgit Jürgenssen, Emanzipation (1973), private collection,
Singapore. Photo courtesy of Estate Birgit Jürgenssen 232
Fig. 11.5 Saint Agatha (likely sculpted in seventeenth century Italy),
Metropolitan Museum, New York. Creative Commons
Attribution CC0 1.0 Universal 233
Fig. 15.1 The Evolution of Mud Mama from Beginning to Start (2008), six
collages in watercolor, gold leaf and collage on paper. Reprinted
from Rubell Family Collection Contemporary Art Foundation
website. Copyright 2008 by Wangechi Mutu. Reprinted with
permission313
Fig. 15.2 Non je ne regretterien (2007), ink, acrylic, glitter, cloth, paper
collage, plastic, plant material and mixed media on Mylar.
Reprinted from Rubell Family Collection Contemporary Art
Foundation website. Copyright 2007 by Wangechi Mutu.
Reprinted with permission 314
Fig. 15.3 California State University, Los Angeles; student interpretation
of an Oankali-human construct. Presented December 7, 2017
by Adora Delgado. Printed with permission 320
Fig. 15.4 California State University, Los Angeles; student interpretation
of Oankali aliens. Presented December 7, 2017 by student
groups. Printed with permission 320
Fig. 16.1 Laura Aguilar, In Sandy’s Room (1989/1993), Gelatin Silver Print.
Image permission courtesy of the artist 349
Fig. 19.1 Recognition film still, The Pinnacles Desert, Western Australia
(2004)413
Fig. 19.2 Recognition film still, The Pinnacles Desert, Western Australia
(2004)413
Fig. 19.3 Shannon and David, Las Ramblas, Barcelona (1975). Photo
courtesy of the author 417
Fig. 19.4 Shannon Bell, China Town, Toronto (2017), photo by Jennifer
Gillmor. Photo commissioned by and courtesy of the author 422
1
Introduction: On the Politics of Ugliness
Ela Przybylo and Sara Rodrigues
Ugliness or unsightliness is much more than a quality or property of one’s

appearance. In Western contexts and histories especially, ugliness has long
functioned as a social category that demarcates one’s rights and access to
social, cultural, and political spaces. People who are unsightly are framed as
not only unworthy of being seen or of having eyes set upon them, but they
then become the target of interventions to curb the possibility of their causing
aversion and discomfort in others. For example, “ugly laws” or “unsightly beg-
gar ordinances,” which were widespread in the US, UK, and Europe by the
late nineteenth century, functioned to formally exclude certain people’s access
from the public sphere on the basis that their bodies would pollute the public
spaces because they were dirty, disabled, “deformed,” sickly, disgusting, or
unsightly.1 Emerging in many cities in the US as a tool of the state, ugly laws
have functioned at the nexus of ableism, classism, racism, and settler colonial-
ism—protecting wealthy, white, able-bodied, and hetero-domesticated settler
subjects from the perceived aggressions of the exploited and exhausted impov-
erished working classes and other “burdensome” subjects.2 Ugly laws, if noth-
ing else, demonstrate the extent to which what we look like, that is, how we
appear to one another but more specifically to those with the power to see,
functions as a key determinant in what kind of life we can expect to live. Yet,
E. Przybylo (*)
Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Simon Fraser University,
Vancouver, BC, Canada
S. Rodrigues
Toronto, ON, Canada
© The Author(s) 2018 1

S. Rodrigues, E. Przybylo (eds.), On the Politics of Ugliness,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76783-3_1
2 E. Przybylo and S. Rodrigues
as with ability, bodies are prone to change, to alter, and to move in and out of
categories of ugliness, such that upholding investments in unsightliness ulti-
mately functions against even the most privileged. In the words of Heather
Laine Talley, “ugliness matters for us all, but it particularly matters for those
with bodies defined as ugly.”3 Bodies are punished when they are deemed
“ugly,” and this treatment is justified on account of their reduction to being
an ugly thing, and thus, as Noël Carroll argues, “beneath or outside ethics.”4
On the Politics of Ugliness is a collection of engagements with ugliness as a
politically invested site, one that flows in and out of dialogue with gender,
ability, race, class, age, sexuality, health, and body size. The editors and authors
of this collection refuse to accept that ugliness is solely the property of a body,
space, or thing, and argue that ugliness is also a function leveraged to uphold
notions of worth and entitlement. In identifying and locating ugliness as a
political category, On the Politics of Ugliness strives to imagine new ways of
seeing ugliness and of being and being seen as ugly by fighting against its cat-
egorization and use as a pejorative denomination of visual injustice.
Ugliness appears everywhere in our everyday lives and in scholarship on the
body, beauty, culture, appearance, and representation. Yet, it is infrequently
engaged with as a direct object of study. As this Introduction will explore,
while mentions of ugliness have been abundant in philosophy, aesthetic and
literary theory, feminist theory, critical race studies, art history, and critical
disability studies, and while ugliness so clearly informs these many fields, it
has been elaborated on in fairly limited terms. In philosophy and art history,
ugliness is usually explored in terms of aesthetics, tending to erase from view
its complex politics and its effects on atypical bodies. In such work, ugliness is
also largely dependent on conceptualizations of beauty, while its social and
relational aspects are obscured from view. Indeed, ugliness seems to emerge as
a property or attribute of places and bodies rather than as a process that relies
on an unjust distribution of value and power in relation to the workings of
gender, ability, race, class, beauty norms, body size, health, sexuality, and age.
This collection seeks to centralize ugliness as an object of study, exploring how
ugliness operates in the perpetuation and justification of social, political, and
visual injustice, and to consider what drives our social and academic fears of
ugliness.
In this chapter, we open up this study of ugliness by exploring what it
means and what is at stake when someone or something is marked with and
by “ugliness.” We do this by considering contemporary deployments of ugli-
ness, with a focus on Western socio-cultural contexts, as well as by providing
a review of theoretical engagements with ugliness. We position ugliness politi-
cally, rather than purely aesthetically, tracing its intersections with discourses,
Introduction: On the Politics of Ugliness 3
practices, and institutions of power. To this end, we trace what it means to

engage with a “politics of ugliness,” through a survey of conceptualizations of
ugliness in both academic literature and the social context, drawing out ugli-
ness as a uniquely mobile category that is deployed not only to marginalize
bodies but also to keep those bodies in their subjugated place.
In outlining the stakes of thinking with ugliness as well as providing an
overview of the existing literature on ugliness, this chapter is organized accord-
ing to the sections that comprise this collection. We begin by exploring ugli-
ness as a form of visual injustice, focusing in particular on how ugliness affects
relating and how spatio-temporalities are organized to expunge bodies deemed
ugly. Following this, we explore the materialization of ugliness through and on
bodies as well as in representations. Next, we consider ways in which ugliness
has been imagined as a site to be desired, as a generative power. Throughout,
we focus on literature that is adept at exploring the politics behind the opera-
tions of ugliness—that is, work within the fields of feminist theory, critical
disability studies, sexuality studies, cultural studies, postcolonial literatures,
and critical race studies. Yet, we find that while many of these fields are, in
intricate and surprising ways, cognizant of the politics of ugliness and how
they map onto other categories, they have not meticulously engaged with ugli-
ness as an object of analysis. This body of interdisciplinary work makes men-
tion of ugliness only incidentally, such that it is more difficult to conduct a
genealogy on the politics of ugliness than on the aesthetics of ugliness. It seems
that theorists have a vested political interested in ugliness but that explicitly
politicized analyses of ugliness are wanting. All the same, this work, as we will
explore, speaks to the political valence of ugliness and its operation alongside
identities and bodies, laying the groundwork for this collection. In what fol-
lows, we argue that it is important to position ugliness politically as a form of
visual injustice, first tracing extant scholarly considerations of the intersection
of ugliness with circuits of power and oppression, and then outlining how the
pieces in this collection consider these intersections anew.
isual Injustice: Relationality and the Spatio-

V
Temporalities of Ugliness
Theoretical and scholarly work on ugliness has developed along two tracks. The
first mostly developed within philosophy, elaborating upon ugliness as an aes-
thetic category opposed to beauty. This body of work suggests that ugliness is
the direct opposite of beauty and that the two qualities are properties of seeing.
Such a view tends to naturalize ugliness as a property of objects, people, places,

and of the technology of sight. The philosophical engagement with ugliness
also binds its analysis to the examination of art and literature. While we do not
explore this literature, we invite readers to read Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer’s
chapter in this volume, entitled simply “Ugliness,” to become orientated more
fully to the genealogy of ugliness in aesthetic theory. We are interested in disas-
sociating our project from the philosophy of aesthetics to pursue a more politi-
cized understanding of ugliness and to consider how categories of ugliness are
interlaced with and deeply underwritten by ability, age, gender, race, class,
body size, health, and sexuality.
Critical disability studies theorist Tobin Siebers argues that while philoso-
phy has sought to disembody aesthetics, aesthetics is inherently political and
embodied.5 Tracing the notion and discipline of “aesthetics” to eighteenth-
century philosopher Alexander Baumgarten, Siebers asserts that “aesthetics
[…] posits the human body and its affective relation to other bodies as foun-
dational to the appearance of the beautiful” and—as this collection will
develop—to the ugly.6 On the Politics of Ugliness draws on this insight of polit-
icizing aesthetics, privileging a politicization of ugliness and its myriad opera-
tions over a disembodied, disconnected, and abstract observation of its
function. While anthropologist Michael Taussig has argued that “beauty is as
much infrastructure as are highways and bridges,” we, in this collection, are
invested in exploring the infrastructures of ugliness.7 In this section, we sum-
marize how ugliness is political and how it comes to take effect through the
operations of gender, ability, race, class, body size, health, sexuality, and age
and in dialogue with other concepts such as “dirt” and “monstrosity.” To this
end, we weave together mentions of ugliness from the fields of feminist the-
ory, critical disability studies, cultural studies, postcolonial literatures, critical
race studies, sexuality studies, fat studies, and transgender studies, to provide
a necessarily partial genealogy of the politics of ugliness.
As art historian Athanassoglou-Kallmyer discusses in her pivotal piece on
thinking ugliness politically, ugliness is at once too broad and too diffuse, serv-
ing as “an all-purpose repository for everything that [does] not quite fit,” a
marker of “mundane reality, the irrational, evil, disorder, dissonance, irregular-
ity, excess, deformity, [and] the marginal.”8 Ugliness thus tends to be, more
often than not, discussed through a variety of proximate and overlapping yet
distinct terms: the nasty, grotesque, abject, feral, plain, unaltered, disgusting,
revolting, dirty, and monstrous. For instance, since the anthropological work
of Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger, “dirt” has been understood as that
which generates social boundaries, a method of designating what belongs
within the social body and what should be expunged from it.9 Dirt and dirty
bodies arise in this reading as dangerous and despised artifacts indicative of

social margins and social anxieties. Dirt also comes to mark “waste” in the
form of the body’s excess fluids such as “[s]pittle, blood, milk, urine, faeces”
and of society’s excess.10 Importantly, 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.11 Yet “dirt” and “waste” do not replicate
the work of ugliness because dirt and ugliness cannot stand in for one another,
even though they are symbolically linked. Ugliness is indicative of a broader
affective disposition that cannot be solely distilled down to dirtiness or waste.
We can refer to this affective disposition as “visual injustice”—a system of dis-
crimination that relies on the politics of appearance and visuality to render and
deny privilege, access, and resources, including power, money, work, and love.
Similarly, the process of thinking about abjection, disgust, and revolt is less
about thinking ugliness than it is about visceral reactions to ugliness. Siebers
establishes that these reactions, alongside the reaction of taste (i.e., finding
something “tasteful”), “reveal the ease or disease with which one body might
incorporate another,” establishing aesthetic effects themselves as inherently
political.12 Thus our visceral responses to dirt, the grotesque, plainness, and/
or monstrosity, are about maintaining social relations and social margins.
These and other “ugly feelings”13 are indicative of culturally and materially
shaped inclinations to the world around us that are grounded in the “ease or
disease” with which we relate to one another.14 Most famously, Julia Kristeva
articulated this as the abject. She writes, “[i]t is thus not lack of cleanliness or
health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, systems, order. What
does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the
composite.”15 Kristeva theorized abjection as a visceral response that speaks to
the disintegration of boundaries between the self and other, suggesting that
reacting with horror to “ugly” smells or appearances is a response of the social-
ized body, and not simply innate.16 Further, Kristeva points out that the dirty
body serves as a reminder that one could, and likely will become, ugly, unruly,
and out of place at one or many points in life.
The conviction that certain bodies are inherently ugly and thus worthy of
confinement or social disposal is evident in the enactment of “ugly laws” in
the United States, which, as Susan Schweik explores, were municipal laws that
refused people access to public spaces on the grounds that some people were
deemed unsightly in appearance and offensive to others.17 These ordinances
were formed on ableist, classist, racist, and settler colonial terms, intent on
preserving a particular white and settler colonial landscape at the expense of
Indigenous people, immigrants, people of color, and people with disabilities.
Drawing on Schweik, Mary Unger argues that panic around ugly bodies
increased in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as new legisla-
tion in the US, intensified police forces, and civic regulation were informed
by new measures and standards of national efficiency and order.18 The impacts
of industrialization on the environment created national desires for keeping
spaces “beautiful” in a Fordist context that mechanized bodies in the cultiva-
tion of a productive, industrialized workforce. Together, this context of desired
national cohesion, Fordism, and aspirations to beauty informed the institu-
tionalization of racist, ableist, settler colonial, and classist mechanisms such as
ugly laws, eugenics, immigration laws, and City Beautiful movements in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They also informed the creation
of institutional spaces for housing those deemed ugly including the prison,
asylum, hospital, and reservation system. As Unger writes, “ugliness in this era
acts as a way to identify aesthetically those who present a social or cultural
danger to the nation.”19 Further, this “ugly panic” extends to eradicating not
only “ugly” bodies but also “ugly” things and spaces as ugliness is understood
as “violat[ing] the aesthetic norm of an efficient and streamlined nation.”20
Architecture, landscape, and city design thus strived and continues to strive
to “exclude people deemed ugly” by reducing their access to public spaces.21
Siebers argues that this “[p]ublic aversion to disability” in particular extends
to a “wider symbolism that includes nonhuman bodies, buildings, and many
other structures.”22 People with disabilities are confronted by inaccessibility
on a daily basis, which forecloses their entry to many public and private
spaces. Moreover, undesirable members of societies are often sequestered into
spaces that are ugly by virtue of design or neglect or both, such as prisons.
Kenneth E. Hartman, a man imprisoned for life, describes the “ghastly ugli-
ness” of the prison. He writes: “Repulsive prisons are everywhere, blotting out
whole sections of the rural landscape of contemporary America, or, inside the
cities, compressed into vertical slabs of blank walls fenestrated only with mir-
rors. These eyesores reek of the industrialization of incarceration, of the huge
business of prison. […] There is a disposable quality. […] The stink of the
abattoir hides behind impassive, silent walls and inside cloned boxes squat-
ting inside miles of chain-link fence.”23 Nonetheless, within the prison,
Hartman recognizes beauty, but it is a function of community and comrad-
ery; it is not of design or place. The beauty—and ugliness—of prison are, for
Hartman, embedded in the prison’s treatment of individuals.24 Ugly laws and
spatial sanctions of ugliness demonstrate hostility towards people with dis-
abilities and incarcerated people that is informed by a conviction that ugli-
ness is both attached to certain bodies and in need of eradication. This
explains the aspiration for clean, manicured spaces and cityscapes that speak
to ideals of good health, upper-classness, and whiteness—“matter in place,”

to draw on Douglas.25
Our aesthetic, political, economic, sexual, and social discomfort with
ugliness thus extends to a dislike of ugly spaces, ugly buildings, dilapidation,
and disrepair. Academic interest in ugliness has recently turned towards its
deployments in the context of space and place and their respective intersec-
tions with consumerism. Myra Hird has conducted some of the most well-
known studies on waste and its management and meanings, suggesting in
one instance that the “indeterminacy” of waste, marked in part by its con-
stant heterogeneity and its modification as a result of its exposure to the
elements, makes waste management a failed project.26 A recent study of con-
sumers’ food purchasing preferences found that people are less likely to con-
sider products that are “ugly” or “suboptimal,” which leads to considerable
food waste.27 Several recent articles in social movement theory have consid-
ered the function of waste and filth in the discourse and practice of Occupy
Wall Street (OWS). Matthew Bolton, Stephen Froese, and Alex Jeffrey argue
that a discourse of dirt framed Zuccotti Park, leading to concerns about
“sanitation” and “disease.” Occupiers were compelled to “order, discipline,
and sanitize” the park and, by extension, their protest as a way to evade the
park’s closure.28 Max Liboiron points out that a discourse of purification was
present in both OWS messaging and popular discourse about the move-
ment.29 A rhetoric of trash and waste pervaded OWS messaging: recent
graduates carrying massive debt loads carried garbage bags as a symbol of the
worthlessness of their degrees in the neoliberal era, and Occupiers saw them-
selves as protesting against Wall Street’s “dirty” money and as involved in an
effort to “clean up” the system.30 At the same time, aggressive municipal
waste management practices, which saw many Occupiers’ personal belong-
ings trashed, were “used as a conscious effort to restrict access to space and
to define and discipline protesters” and to portray the camps as “hazardous,”
“unsafe,” and “dirty.”31
Materialities and Representations of Ugliness

In addition to work on concepts related to ugliness such as dirt and the abject,
and to considerations of the spatialization of ugliness, there have also been
fruitful instances of exploring the politics of ugliness more broadly. French
writer Violette Leduc wrote that “ugliness in a woman is a mortal sin. If you’re
beautiful, you turn heads for your beauty. If you’re ugly, you turn heads for
your ugliness.” Leduc’s apt observation demonstrates that ugliness, like beauty,
is harnessed against women in misogynist ways and is attached to the intrinsic
worth and value a woman holds in the world—her currency under patriar-
chy.32 As is well known, feminists have routinely been accused of being both
inherently “ugly” and have been attacked for our supposed refusal to engage in
beauty practices. The resulting “caricature of the ugly feminist” demonstrates
that ugliness is as much about appearance as it is about behaviors that depart
from the social norms acceptable in and to capitalist patriarchy.33 Most recently
and infamously, Hillary Clinton, in the final debate of the 2016 US presiden-
tial election, was dubbed by Donald Trump a “nasty woman” (a label that
shortly thereafter took over the feminist corners of the Internet resulting, for
instance, in the production of “nasty woman” t-shirts), demonstrating the
ways in which women in power easily border on various analogues for ugli-
ness, nastiness included. The production of ugliness, like the production of
beauty, is thus dependent on disciplinary codes of appearance and conduct. If
the production of femininity is, drawing on Sandra Lee Bartky’s seminal work,
a series of “disciplinary practices” that relate to a woman’s “body’s sizes and
contours, its appetite, posture, gestures and general comportment in space and
the appearance of each of its visible parts” then to be conceived of as an “ugly”
woman (or an “ugly” feminist) is to breach these codes of behavior, attention,
and appearance—to either disregard them, mimic them improperly, or to be
in excess of them.34 Entire regulatory mechanisms emerge to render “ugly”
female faces and bodies less ugly and thus acceptable for consumption. Beauty
apps such as Meitu and FaceTune enable uses to filter and retouch photos—
smoothing skin, slimming faces, and Westernizing features—before sharing
them on social media. Their precursors were makeover television series like
The Swan, which “transformed” “self-identified ugly ducklings [via] domains
of cultural/biomedical surveillance currently available,” all in the name of “lib-
eration, empowerment, and healthy personal fulfillment.”35 Such interven-
tions also have a racialized quality, since, as Eugenia Kaw demonstrates,
surgeries such as “double-eyelid” surgery are prevalent among Asian-American
women who want to pursue a more “Caucasian-looking eye” as the emblem of
beauty within white supremacist frameworks of appearance.36
Sociologist Heather Laine Talley, in Saving Face: Disfigurement and the
Politics of Appearance, argues that, rather than trying to be beautiful, countless
procedures are aimed at making one “not ugly,” since women and girls fear
being ugly above and beyond much else.37 Echoing Kathy Davis’s work, Talley
suggests that the desire to be “not ugly” is “at the most basic level, the desire
to live outside of the stigma of ugliness.”38 The practices of being “not ugly”
are, Talley suggests, ableist and rooted in a fear of bodily variance and a deep
desire to appear, simply, normal. In exploring the workings of this, Talley
looks to what she identifies as “facial variance” including cases in which a
person does not have a face or has an irregular face, which becomes a marker
of a disability unlike nearly any other and is widely understood, due to appear-
ance discrimination, as social death.39 Lucy Grealy, in Autobiography of a Face,
demonstrates the great extent to which the face counts in whether a person is
understood as “ugly.” She writes, “I was my face; I was ugliness.”40 To have an
irregular face, to be “ugly” in this way, is to be deemed worthy of disposal and/
or awaiting social death, thereby demonstrating the intertwined nature of the
structures of ugliness and disability as well as their lethal effects.
People with disabilities are routinely rendered ugly and undesirable by
able-bodied people, demonstrating a deep-seated commitment to able-bodied
ideology (i.e., ableism) and normative embodiments. Rosemarie Garland-
Thomson has explored the ways in which appearance politics play a central
function in the social making of disability and the ways in which people with
disabilities are discriminated against.41 Both aging adults and people with
disabilities, for instance, undergo a process of desexualization through the
operation of ugliness and being rendered “undesirable.” Russell Shuttleworth,
along with other critical disability studies theorists, argues that the violent
process of desexualization, that is, of being barred from being sexual, rests not
only on the assumption that people with disabilities are less desiring and
capable of sex but also that they are less attractive and thus less entitled to
sex.42 Hatred of aging and disability are informed by white ideals of youth,
health, able-bodiedness, and normative beauty, all of which are underwritten
by a politics of ugliness. Women are especially taxed with the expectation that
they should not be ugly and that if they are ugly, they are unworthy of sex.
Hatred of ugliness is further fueled by deep-seated racism that often mani-
fests itself as visual injustice. Yeidy Rivero discusses how the Colombian ver-
sion of Ugly Betty was, much like its ABC counterpart, “informed by
intertwined Eurocentric, patriarchal, racial, Western/Christianized ideologies”
and driven by racialized notions of ugliness.43 The histories that equate racial-
ized bodies with ugliness and ugliness with racialization are so complex that it
would be fair to argue that ugliness is a concept thoroughly reliant on racism
for meaning. In the words of sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig, “racism is prac-
ticed as a visual hatred.”44 For example, in The Racial Contract, Charles W. Mills
discusses how projects of conquest from the Enlightenment onwards were
founded on a political dislike of black features and a visual injustice that
favored the appearance of whiteness above all else.45 Thus “the white body
[was made] the somatic norm, so that in early racist theories one finds not
only moral but aesthetic judgments, with beautiful and fair faces pitted against
ugly and dark races.”46 Slaveholder Thomas Jefferson celebrated the rights of
white men in 1781 by drawing them as distinct from black men on the basis
of their appearance, writing of the “superior beauty” of the white race and the
ugliness of the “colored race.”47 From hair texture to skin tone, facial shape to
body height and size, whiteness has been deeply conflated with beauty and
goodness, and racialization with ugliness and moral failing. Because women
are often valued for their beauty and punished for its lack, challenging the
conflation of racialization with ugliness has been a central political concern for
women and feminists of color. Leeds Craig argues that in the face of white
supremacist notions of appearance according to which black women were por-
trayed as “ugly and sexually available,” “black women had to contest their
wholesale definition as non-beauties.”48 Black feminist interventions into this
narrative of beauty and ugliness are infinite and include the work of bell hooks,
Toni Morrison’s literary canon, and reclamations of beauty ranging from
“Black is Beautiful” in the 1960s to the #BlackGirlMagic movement launched
by CaShawn Thompson and in circulation in the last several years on social
media.49 Anti-racist approaches to beauty have often emphasized and embraced
“beauty” in contexts of the racist conflation of ugliness with bodies of color,
focusing on honing an oppositional consciousness grounded in the body and
oriented against white supremacist and colonial norms of appearance. Further,
a black “politics of respectability” has been modeled in part on a distancing
from notions of “ugly” appearance and behavior, emphasizing instead white
bourgeois norms and habits as a strategy to combat racism.50
Bodies that more successfully perform beauty norms and reject “ugly”
behaviors and presentations are more likely to secure or retain elevated socio-
economic status.51 For example, Rivero discussed how Ugly Betty relied on the
protagonist climbing the social ladder and finding heterosexual coupledom
through a process of beautification and rejection of her assigned ugliness.52
Ugliness, like beauty, in this way is a class-based attribute. Further, in her
memoir on working-class lesbian identity, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure,
Dorothy Allison writes of the ways ugliness is used against working-class
women who “get worn down” with work and patriarchal oppression.53 She
writes that “we were hard and ugly and trying to be proud of it. The poor are
plain, virtuous if humble and hardworking, but mostly ugly. Almost always
ugly.”54 Rivero and Allison as well as Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson
provide a commentary on the ways in which those who occupy socially disen-
franchised and overworked bodies will remain framed as ugly by mainstream
thought and politics unless they secure the resources to partake in bodily
upkeep along normative lines.55 Because femininity in particular requires intri-
cate upkeep and economic investment, ugliness can also be used against women
who do not partake in the “fashion-beauty complex”56 or “beauty myth,”57
honing instead a “plain” or “unaltered” aesthetic in order to reject normative
body standards as they are tied to race, ability, class, age, sexuality, health, and
body size. This pressure is felt especially by transgender women who are
expected to perform normative femininity supremely, with no margin for error,

facing discriminatory expulsion from the category “woman” if they fail.58
Fat studies scholars and activists have traced and challenged the longstand-
ing association between fatness and ugliness. While fat bodies were once
revered because they signified wealth and prosperity, the proliferation of adver-
tising and consumer culture has, over the past four decades, turned a fat body
into an ugly body.59 Such scholarship makes clear that the association of fatness
with ugliness is not natural but instead emerges from the “historical and cul-
tural positioning” of fat people in a society that benefits from their marginal-
ization60 as well as from processes of adhering meaning onto bodies.61 The
association between fatness and ugliness impacts fat people’s social and profes-
sional lives62 as well as their access to non-discriminatory medical and health
care.63 Saguy and Ward argue that to “come out” as fat is to reject the associa-
tion between fatness and ugliness (among other unjust associations); however,
they recognize that such a move generates a climate in which some stigmas are
reclaimable while others are not. Interestingly, they wonder when people might
subsequently reclaim the stigma of “ugliness” by “coming out” as ugly.64
Aside from a few studies on the growing phenomenon of lookism, academics
have yet to engage seriously with appearance-related discrimination.65 Bonnie
Berry’s work across her two books Beauty Bias and The Power of Looks offers an
important exception, as she explores social stratification based on appearance.66
Berry offers the term “social aesthetics” as a way to recognize the public and social
aspect of the reception of one’s appearance as interlaced with bias and grounded
in social inequality. What we have been referring to as visual injustice, Berry
terms “looks-bias” and “lookism” or bias against people considered not attractive
or ugly, which can have mild to severe economic and social impacts on one’s life.
Notably, Talley identifies both “uglyism” and “facism,” drawing on Anthony
Synnott. Talley articulates these as “a pattern of bias that systematically disad-
vantages those whose appearance is at odds with dominant conventions of
attractiveness.”67 Popular writers and bloggers have started to share first-hand
experiences of ugliness and are heeding the call for a de-stigmatization of ugli-
ness. With the idea of prettiness as a labor-intensive “skill set” in mind,
Jezebel’s Tracey Moore suggested that women are starting, albeit slowly, to
advocate for the “freedom” to be ugly.68 An anonymous woman shared her
experience of ugliness in response to a Reddit AskWomen thread that asked
what life is like for an “unattractive woman.” The poster, doduo, associated
ugliness with invisibility, writing that, in the context of heterosexual relations,
men “don’t want to talk to you. They don’t see you. Bartenders forget my
order.”69 She also felt that her status as “ugly” affected her employment, writ-
ing that “it’s impossible to find a retail job, or a desk job. No one wants to hire
an unattractive [woman] for front-of-house.”70 Blogger Denarii Monroe
recently argued that “lookism”—discrimination on the basis of appearance—

inhibits her capacity to be carefree and/or uninhibited in her everyday life.
Monroe suggests that people whose appearance falls within the bounds of
what is considered conventionally attractive can make silly faces or engage in
odd bodily expressions and still be read as attractive. “Spontaneity,” Monroe
argues, “was a luxury I could not afford.”71 Monroe implies that advocacy and
activism ought to shift focus to establish for people the “right” to be ugly and,
with it, the freedom to be “all the iterations” of oneself.72
Transgender, genderqueer, and non-binary bodies are also patrolled and
disciplined through invective language grounded in a politics of ugliness.
Susan Stryker, in a classic essay in transgender studies, speaks back to cisgen-
der accusations of transgender bodies as being ugly by depicting herself as “a
monster.”73 In depicting herself as a “monster,” Stryker talks back to this vio-
lent language, utilizing monstrosity as a useful symbol for problematizing the
bounds of gender. Monstrosity has a long history of deployment against mar-
ginalized bodies including women, racialized people, people with disabilities,
gay and lesbian people, and transgender people.74 Jasbir Puar and Amit Rai
have observed that monstrosity has been utilized to construct concepts of the
racialized terrorist and thus to justify politics of racist hatred.75 Along with
feminists, lesbian, queer, genderqueer, non-binary, and transgender people are
frequently accused of ugliness as payback for breaking with conventional gen-
der understandings. Sociologist Wendy Chapkis has written that “ugly is more
than a physical description. For a woman it’s meant to be shorthand for
worthless, undesirable, undeserving. And lesbians are by popular definition
ugly women.”76 In these ways, ugliness functions to keep the bounds of gen-
der in check, and is used to keep bodies in line, in their presumed place.
Considerations of ugliness have also surfaced in theorizations of the operation
of ugliness in/on the non-human, with a particular focus on feral animals and
ugly species. For instance, a recent meta-analysis of studies on species conserva-
tion in Australia found that, although conservation-based studies and efforts
have expanded in recent years, taxonomic bias against “ugly” species exists in
scientific reporting.77 Fleming and Bateman found that mammals considered as
“ugly” and/or not “charismatic,” such as rodents and bats, were the subject of far
fewer studies despite greater species diversity and a higher rate of extinction.78
Desiring Ugliness: Ugliness as Generative Power

At the same time, there is also a curious fetishization of ugliness in the contem-
porary moment, which has its origins in modern art. Today, abandoned sites
become the subject of high-resolution photographic exhibitions (e.g., Zach
Fein’s photographs of Detroit and Michael Day’s photographs of Chernobyl);

the uses of ruins in art are the subject of major art exhibitions (e.g., the Tate
Modern’s 2014 “Ruin Lust” exhibition); and tourism projects in notably
“beautiful” cities host walking tours of “ugly” sights (e.g., Eugene Quinn’s
“Vienna Ugly Tour”).79 More pointedly, against this fetishization of ugliness,
the strategic embrace of ugliness by marginalized groups can constitute a form
of protest, as was discussed above with regard to the Occupy Wall Street move-
ment. Further, several postcolonial literary works effectively deploy common
sense understandings of ugliness against colonizers, claiming ugliness as a tool
that can be used as the ground for building a subaltern consciousness and an
anti-colonial politics. For instance, Jamaica Kincaid, in her polemic A Small
Place, memorably depicts ugliness as the property of the tourist who neocolo-
nizes the island of Antigua. In this reversal, “a tourist is an ugly human being
[…] An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly,
empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze
at this and taste that.”80 Ugliness is here effectively deployed back against the
neocolonial do-gooder tourist subject, such that it is a property not of this or
that person, but of the processes, habits, and inclinations of colonial intrusion.
In a different way, Edwige Danticat enacts a performative self-naming of ugli-
ness, mobilizing the Haitian idiom “‘Nou lèd, nou la!’ We are ugly, but we are
here!”81 Mobilizing the symbolics of ugliness and their racist, sexist, and colo-
nial trajectories, Danticat refuses to be excised under colonial rubrics of
ugliness-as-disposability, in turn remaking ugliness as a positive marker of
identity and means of survival in the face of colonial oppression.
Similarly, other feminist scholars and writers have also put ugliness to use
in strategic ways that talk back to patriarchal systems that function to expect
beauty of women and punish those women who are deemed ugly. Karina
Eileraas Karakuş, in “Witches, Bitches, and Fluids,” discusses rock and punk
girl bands’ performances of ugliness. She considers their ugly sounds, such as
shrieks and wails, their ugly appearance (marked by ripped hosiery and messy
make-up), their unfeminine aggression, and the intentional presence of their
bodily fluids.82 In such subversive enactments, ugliness becomes a feminist
tool that can resist the discipline, beautification, and (self-)objectification of
feminine bodies. Similarly, Valerie Chepp has considered women rappers, like
Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown, who subvert norms of black “respectability” by
honing “irreverence,” strategically drawing on “ugly” behaviors to claim sexual
and bodily subjectivity.83 Unger also discusses how the avant-garde poet
Djuna Barnes centralized ugliness when writing about marginalized women
in early twentieth-century New York City, offering a commentary on sexism
and unsightliness in a national context consumed with “cleaning up” the
cityscape through ordinances such as ugly laws.84
Importantly, as we have been discussing, ugliness is not one thing, and it is

not a property of one body or another. It is, instead, borrowing from Siebers’
insight, a “social location complexly embodied.”85 As a repository for many
socio-cultural feelings and attitudes, ugliness operates in ways that have danger-
ous and deadly consequences for bodies and those who inhabit them. When a
body is labeled or understood as “ugly,” it is subsequently targeted for expung-
ing, overlooking, destruction, and affectively motivated terror. Instead of cham-
pioning beauty, and instead of presenting ugliness as a site of undesirability and
something to be abjected and rejected, the works that comprise On the Politics
of Ugliness harness the generative possibilities of ugliness as a way into rethink-
ing, reframing, and reoccupying marginalization, institutionalization, represen-
tation, bio-politicization, stigmatization, narrativization, and visualization.
Situating Ugliness, Politics, and Interdisciplinarity

On the Politics of Ugliness draws on the rich trajectory of interdisciplinary
feminist thinking and research to centralize ugliness as a political category and
to develop several claims about ugliness. This collection explores the various
ways in which ugliness is deployed against those whose bodies, habits, ges-
tures, feelings, expressions, or ways of being deviate from social norms. It
argues that ugliness is political in two ways: first, it denotes inequalities and
hierarchies, often serving as a repository for all that is “other” and despised;
second, it is contingent and relational, taking shape through the comparison
and evaluation of bodies.
Critical engagements with ugliness have been relatively constant through-
out the twentieth century but the past three decades have seen a particular
resurgence in scholarly interest in ugliness. This revival is arguably galvanized
by feminist theoretical articulations of associated concepts such as abjection,86
the grotesque,87 and monstrosity,88 which, as we outlined above, consider the
intersection of ugliness with bodies and embodiment. Still, it is the art histori-
cal lens and its interests that remains the dominant mode of engaging with
ugliness. Even though contemporary theorists work to re-envision ugliness,
they largely remain interested in the place and function of ugliness in art and
literature or in explicating the philosophies of ugliness, with a focus on the
classical and modern eras. With regard to the former interest, a number of
recent works examine how ugliness was mobilized in classical or modern art
and literature. Patrizia Bettella follows representations of ugly women in thir-
teenth- to seventeenth-century Italian poems written by men to reveal a per-
vasive misogynist sentiment in medieval culture.89 Naomi Baker’s Plain Ugly
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pormestarin viitta, hän näet menee siinä huomenna lähetystön
mukana Neugradin komitaattiin. Huudan keittiöön: 'Maks, tuopas
viimeinkin se silitysrauta!' Mutta ei silitysrautaa eikä Maksiakaan
kuulunut. Eikö ihminen tällöin jo kiukusta pakahdu?"
Turkkuri Valentin Katona piti pojan puolta.
"Täysikasvuista nuorukaista ei saa enää kohdella kisällinä eikä

kiusata liesiraudan kuumentamisella."
"Hoitakaa te omaa vasikkaanne", vastasi räätäli karkeasti. "Mitäpä

minä sitten teen koko pojalla? Ennemmin tai myöhemmin hänet
kuitenkin hirtetään. Hän nuuskii alati kaupungin asioita. Kyllä minä
annan sinulle kaupungin asioita pohdittavaksi. Sen viikarin hakkaan
ruskeaksi ja siniseksi."
"Ei tule mitään siitä", tokaisi Valentin Katona jälleen, ajatellen

nuoren miehen tänpäiväistä suurta ansiotyötä.
"Maa minut nielköön, ellen häntä kurita."
Valentin Katona alkoi juuri pehmeämpää raaka-ainetta

käsittelevälle ammattiveljelleen selittää, kuinka Maks joutui
senaattiin, kun samassa neuvottelusalin ikkuna rämisten aukeni ja
jalo herra Gabriel Porossnoki siitä huusi ukkosäänellä:
"Kunnioitettavat Kecskemetin kaupungin asukkaat!"
Haudanhiljaisuus seurasi. "Ilmoitan teille senaatin nimessä, että
tästä päivästä alkaen vuodeksi eteenpäin on jalo ja kunnioitettava
herra Mikael Lestyak lakiemme ja tapojemme mukaan valittu
kaupungin ylituomariksi."
Ällistyksen mutina-aalto kävi läpi koko tiheään sulloutuneen
joukon.
Ensin kuului naurunrähäkkää. "Hahahaal Mikael Lestyak!

Hehehee!"
Mutta pian tapaili mukaan toisia ääniä, jotka totunnaisesti

huusivat: "Eljen! Eläköön!"
Ja näihin ensimäisiin 'eljen'-huutoihin yhtyi pian satoja, ja näin

kasvoi valtavan voimakas huuto… Jos ensimäinen 'eljen' olisi ollut
vaatimattomampi ja ensimäinen hahaha raikkaampi, silloin olisi
'eljen' saanut hajaääniä ja taivaita tavoitteleva huuto olisi kajahtanut
kuin helvetin nauru: "Hahahaa! Hihihii!"
Mitä suurempi joukko on, sitä häälyvämpi. Kuten kevyt untuva,

jonka ensimäinen tuulenleyhkä nostaa korkeuksiin, kallistuu sekin
milloin oikealle milloin vasemmalle.
Riemukkain 'eljen'-huudoin tulvaili kansaa kaduilta. Kaikilta

suunnilta riensi uteliaita. Muutamilla oli vesisangot käsissä, ja ne
huusivat; "Missä palaa?" Toiset kyselivät: "Mitä on tekeillä, mitä
tapahtunut?"
Kaupungintalon portti avautui ja kaksittain tulivat senaattorit ulos,

Mikael Lestyak keskellään.
"Hän tulee! Hän tulee!" Syntyi kauhea tungos. Jokainen tahtoi tulla
lähemmä.
Hän asteli ylpeänä, arvokkaana, ikäänkuin ei enää olisikaan

Mikael. Nuoruuden puna hehkui hänen poskillaan, hän loi
hymyilevän katseensa väkijoukkoon, niinkuin onnenlapsen sopiikin.
Hänen sivullaan kulki kaksi heitukkaa [maakuntapoliisi] kohotetuin
sauvoin kuten ennen vanhaan Rooman konsulien liktorit. Siinä olivat
vallan attribuutit.
Mutta se olikin varsin suotavaa arvoisalle herra tuomarillemme —

sillä tuo kahdenkolmatta vuotias nuori mies, paitahihasillaan ja
hiukioimissa liiveissään, näytti noiden hopeanappisissa dolmaneissa
[levätti] komeilevien arvonsenaattorien rinnalla aikalailla erikoiselta.
Ehkäpä juuri tämä nähtävyys sai kansan riemusta remahtamaan.
Lestyak-ukko oli vuoroon kalpea, vuoroon purppuranpunainen.

"Jumalani, jumalani, uneksinko minä siis?" (Ja tällöin hän hieroi
pieniä harmaita silmiään, pyyhkäisi ehkä pois esiinpyrkivän
kyyneleenkin.) "Naapuri, tukekaa minua!" Ja hän olisikin lyyhistynyt
siihen paikkaan, ellei Valentin Katona olisi pidellyt häntä pystyssä.
"No, nyt heilutelkoon teidän jalosukuisuutenne espanjanruokoa

kaupungin ylituomarin selässä, jos olette niin mahtava valtias."
Hän ei vastannut mitään, mutta keppi putosi hänen voimattomasta

kädestään; hän sulki silmänsä, mutta pimeässäkin hän tunsi
ylituomarin lähestyvän; hän hypähti kuin elohiiri hänen luoksensa,
peitti hänet silittämättömään uuteen viittaan, jossa vielä näkyivät
valkoiset ompeleet ja räätälin tekemät liituviivat.
Joukko hyväksyi raikuvin riemuhuudoin tämänkin tempun, vain

Valentin Katona virkkoi ilkamoiden: "Hehei! Matias kuomaseni!
Kuinka puettuna menee nyt Halasin pormestari Fülekiin?"
Räätälivanhus vastasi äkeän uhmaavasti: "Menköön szürissään

[mekkoa muistuttava vaatekappale]. Hän on niikseen liian
vähäpätöinen henkilö minun ommella hänelle viittoja."
Ja nyt hän syöksyi raivostuneen härän lailla joukon läpi, kiiruhti
kotiin, talopahastansa varjostavaan pikku puutarhaan, jossa suuri
päärynäpuu huojutteli haluakiihoittavasti ruosteenpunaisia
hedelmiään ja kurkoitti tukevia oksiaan pitkälle kadun yli. Oravan
kepeänä hän kiipesi aivan sen latvaan ja alkoi kuin mieletön ravistaa
sen latvaoksia. Ihanatuoksuiset päärynät, hänen kateellisesti
varjelemansa ylpeydet, putosivat nyt joukon sekaan, "tsup, tsup", ja
lapset ja naiset heittäytyivät tämän taivaanlahjan niskaan, niinkuin
ihmiset kullan kimppuun, jota ylirahastonhoitaja kruunauksen aikana
kujille siroittelee. Ikämiehetkin kumartuivat poimimaan kieriviä
pääryniä.
"Syökää itsenne hulluiksi ja pulleiksi! Siinä teille on ateriaa!" kirkui

vanhus ja ravisteli ja ravisteli hurjana vanhaa puuta niin kauan kuin
siinä oli yksikin päärynä. — — — Siten juhlittiin hänen poikansa
virkanimitystä.
Ylituomarinvaalin synnyttämä ensi huumaus oli ohitse.
"Se oli lopultakin hullua", arveltiin. "Ensiluokan narripeliä."
"Kaupunki joutuu naurunalaiseksi!" huomauttivat monet.
"Sen ovat ne neropatit, senaattorit tehneet, pelastaakseen

nahkansa hyvään talviuneen."
Sieltä ja täältä kohosi kiukunääniä, huokui kademieltä, ja

tyytymättömyys puhkesi kukkaansa.
Mutta järkevät vallanpitäjät riensivät tunnustamaan uuden
ylituomarin.
Zülfikar aga lähetti hänelle "lujasta Szolnokin linnoituksesta"

kirjeen, jossa kehoitti tätä aloittamaan virkatoimensa sillä jalolla
teolla, että hän lunastaisi hänen huostassaan olevat kaksi erakkoa.
Herra Stefan Csuda pyysi häneltä melkoisen ystävällisin

äänensävyin neljä kuormavaunullista leipää.
Vain Budan kaimakanin luottamusmies Halil effendi, joka saapui

Kecskemetiin järjestämään sikäläisiä verotusoloja, riehui
kaupungintalolla raivoissaan siitä, että hänen annettiin neuvotella
parrattoman nulikan kanssa; ylituomari kääntyi kerran kantapäiilään
ja paiskasi ulosmennessään oven tiukasti kiinni. Jonkun minuutin
kuluttua palasi heitukka Pintyö vanhaa vuohipukkia nuorasta
raahaten.
"Mitä aijot tuolla tyhmällä elukalla, uskoton koira?"
"Tuon sen herra ylituomarin käskystä. Herra suvaitkoon neuvotella

pukin kanssa, sillä on parta."
Tämä leikkaus miellytti Kecskemetiä, ja vaaka heilahti Miskan

eduksi.
"Siinä on mies! Hän ei joudu ymmälle. Hän on rökittänyt effendiä

kelpotavalla. Sellaista ylituomaria ei meillä vielä ole ollutkaan." Ja he
seurasivat tarkasti hänen tekojaan, nähdäkseen, mitä miehestä
oikein lähtee. Ja melkein jokainen päivä antoikin yleisen mielipiteen
jauhettavaksi pikku herkun. Kerrottiin ylituomarin kutsuneen
luoksensa kultaseppä Johann Baloghin ja Kronstadtista tänne
muuttaneen kuulun kullantakojan Venzel Valterin; heidän piti
valmistaa ruoska, jonka varsi olisi puhdasta kultaa, topaasein,
smaragdein ja kaikenmoisin sädehtivin jalokivin koreiltu, ja edelleen
kultakudonnainen fokosh, jonka varsi niinikään piti olla kullasta ja
huotra puhtaasta hopeasta. He eivät saaneet pitää päivää yötä
parempana, pikemmin ehkä päinvastoin. Nämä molemmat arvokkaat
työt nielisivät miljoonan. (Niin, liikeneekö siis kaupungilta sellaiseen
varoja?) Seuraavana sunnuntaina kävivät tuomarit ja molemmat
senaattorit kaikki myymälät ja ostivat kaikki kansallisväri-
nauhavarastot, sitten he ajoivat kaupungin neljällä hevosella
"Szikralle". Szikra on Kecskemetin Sahara. Hiekkameri. Sittemmin
ovat lastenlapset istuttaneet sinne puita; silloin oli hiekka vielä
vapaata, se liikkui ja vyöryi korkeina, rajuina aaltoina mielensä
mukaan, loppumattomiin. Yltympärillä rajattomilla lakeuksilla ei vettä,
ei ainuttakaan kasvia, aurinko heittää liljanvalkoiset säteensä
miljardeille hiekkajyville, jotka liikahtelevat silmää häikäisevän
nopeasti, aivan kuin tuhannet näkymättömät luudat olisivat
toiminnassa, tai kuin auringonsäde itse niillä liikkuisi ja hypähtelisi.
Eläimistä, elävästä olennosta ei merkkiäkään. Tämä lakeus ei voi
elättää edes pientä myyrää. Sillä tämä alue onkin vain
läpikulkumatkalla. Täällä ei kukaan voi olla kotonaan, sillä maa ei ole
itsekään kotonaan. Maamyyräkin tahtoo pesästä kerran lähdettyään
sen löytää jälleen. Kukapa voisi osoittaa yhdenkin hiekkakummun,
jonka hän huomenis löytäisi samanlaisena? Kummut siirtyvät
paikoiltaan kuin rauhattomat vaeltajat, ne hajoavat ja muodostuvat
toiseen paikkaan uudelleen… Syvä kuolonhiljaisuus vallitsee. Vain
joskus visertää pääsky korkealla ilmassa, se ei halveksi lentää sen
ylitse. Kaukana, hyvin kaukana näkyy sorsaparvi. Siellä on jossain
lampi. Aurinko nousee hiekkakummusta esiintaistellen ja iltaisin
painuu se hiekkakumpuun takaisin. Aurinko itsekin on kuin loistava
hiekkakunnas, jonka kultainen pöly laskeutuu korkeuksista
harmaanruskeaan yksitoikkoiseen maahan. Kauas, kauas on
vaellettava, ennenkuin tahaton ilonhuudahdus kirpoaa huulilta.
Silloin ei ole vesi enää kaukana. Kääpiöpajujen lomitse kiemurtelee
runollinen Tisza, sulovesi-virtamme. Vasemmalla välkkyy matala
maja. Sen takana levittäytyvät rehevät laitumet huojuvine
ruohoineen. Ylituomarin mielenkiintoa herätti aavikon elämä; hän
tarkasteli kaikkea vuoron perään. Sitten hän antoi härkä- ja
hevospaimenille määräyksen, että tästä päivästä neljän viikon
perästä pitää auringonnousun aikoihin kaupungintalon edustalla olla
sata kaunissarvista valkoista härkää ja viisikymmentä virheetöntä
ratsua, joiden harjat ovat kansallisvärisin nauhoin koristellut. Tämä
toimenpide ei pysynyt salassa, senjälkeen kun herrat olivat kotiin
palanneet, ja jos Kecskemetissä jo tällöin olisi ilmestynyt
sanomalehtiä, niin olisi vastaava toimittaja julaissut tämän uutisen
välikkein harvennettuna. Mutta nyt haastelivat porvarit asiasta vain
viinikulhojen ääressä: "Kultainen fokosh! Kansallisvärisin nauhoin
koreillut härät ja hevoset! Kuninkaanpoika ehkä haluaa kaupungille
paimentinkiläiseksi." Mutta entistäkin suuremmaksi kasvoi
hämmästys seuraavana päivänä, jolloin Gyurka Pintyö rummun
päristessä pääkadulla karkealla äänellään teki tiettäväksi:
"Trum, trumm, ta-ra-ra! Kaikille niille, joita asia koskee,

ilmoitetaan." Tässä oli rumpua kuljettavan Gyurkan säännöllisenä
tapana hetkinen hengähtää ja kallistaa sellerinmuotoista päätänsä
sivulle kuni surumielisen hanhen, mutta niin taiten, että hänen
huulensa osuivat levätin sisätaskussa pullottavan taskumatin suulle,
josta hän otti hyvän siemauksen ja sitten kostutetuin kurkuin jatkoi
jyristen; "Että joka tahtoo päästä Turkin keisarin puolisoksi,
ilmoittautukoon jalolle herra ylituomarille."
Nyt tietysti seurasi sopotusta sinne, sopotusta tänne. "Ylituomari
on tullut hulluksi."
"Kypsymätön poika", murisivat monet. Kysymykseen tutustutetut,

ne jotka tiesivät, mikä oli tarkoitus, ravistelivat päätänsä: "Ei synny
mitään." Lapselliset toki kummastelivat ja iloitsivat
kunnianosoituksesta, sillä olihan kaunista, että Turkin keisari valitsi
puolisonsa Kecskemetistä; (Puhukoonpa nyt Nagy-Körös!) Tytöt ja
nuoret lesket haastelivat kummissaan tuosta merkittävästä uutisesta.
He pilkkasivat ja ahdistelivat toisiaan rohkeilla kaivopuheilla viisi
päivää. Ylituomarin suunnitelma piteni kuin etanan sarvet yhä
kauemmaksi. Levisi tieto, että sulttaani Muhamed IV saapuisi
piakkoin Budaan; niinikään kerrottiin, että hänelle vietäisiin sata
härkää ja viisikymmentä ratsua ja että senaattorit valitsevat hänelle
lahjaksi neljä Kecskemetin ihaninta neitosta.
"Vain neljä?" huudahti epäillen Paul Inokain kaunis rouva; "keisari

parka!"
"Ja jospa tietäisit, sisar Borcsa", selitti Matias Toth, "että hänellä
on kotona vielä kolmesataa kuusiseitsemättä vaimoa".
"Hänellä on varmaankin paljo touhua", pisti tähän sanansa älykäs

rouva Georg Ugi, "ennenkuin hän aamuisin saa ne kaikki
kuritetuksi". (Ja hän maiskutti vastenmielisesti kieltään.) Kirkas
naisenäly, tällä kerralla Kata Agostonin, keksi heti onnettomimman
noiden monien joukosta. "Surku sitä raukkaa, jonka vuoro on
helmikuun 29:nä, sinä vuonna, jolloin helmikuussa on vain päivää
kahdeksankolmatta. Kuinka hänen käy?"
Siihen ei Matias Tothkaan osannut vastata, hän mutisi jotakin, että

turkkilaisilla on toinen kalenteri, mutta se ei estänyt naisia kyyneliin
asti säälimästä kolmattasadannettakuudettakymmenettäkuudetta
vaimoa. (Oi, onnetonta sielua!) Sitten sai uteliaisuus johtoaseman,
kenellä on kylmää uskallusta ilmoittautua. Ei olisi hullumpaa tietää,
keitä ne neljä Kecskemetin kukkatarhan kauneinta ruusua olisivat,
jotka valtuusto valitsisi. Salaisesti askarrutti tuo turhamainen ajatus
turhamaista sydäntä. Mutta hävyntunne sanoi: "Seis!" Ylituomarin
kasvot saivatkin pian pettyneen ilmeen. Sunnuntaihin mennessä ei
ainoatakaan kalaa koukussa. Niin tosiaankin, rouva Fabian saapui
mustatuin kulmakarvoin, pinkkonutussaan. "Arvaatteko, herra
ylituomari, miksi tulin?" sanoi hän silmillään veikistellen.
"Tulitte kenties maksamaan veroa."
"Mutta olkaa nyt!" ja pitsiliinallaan hän löyhytti kiemaillen

Lestyakia.
"Ehkä tulitte jotakuta syyttämään?"
"En."
"Kerännette varoja papin hyväksi?" jatkoi ylituomari.
Rouva Fabian painoi surullisena päänsä alas ja huokasi: "Ellette

arvaa, olisi suotta minun sitä sanoa." Hänen äänensä ilmaisi
tuskallista kieltäymystä, sydäntäkouristavaa surumieltä.
"Mitä! Ettehän toki tulle ilmoittautumaan?"
"Olen leski", virkkoi toinen häveliäästi.
"Onhan sekin peruste. Hm!"

"Teen sen kaupunkini hyväksi", jatkoi leski korviaan myöten
punastuen.
"Mutta mitä sanovat siihen isä Bruno, isä Litkei?" urahti ylituomari
puolin vihaisena puolin nauraen. "Hehän ovat teistä tehneet miltei
pyhimyksen."
"Luetan sieluni puolesta messun. Sieluni jää edelleenkin kirkon

omaksi, ruumiini uhraan kaupungilleni."
"Hyvä! Hyvä! Merkitsen nimenne muistiin."
Paitsi häntä ilmoittautui vielä jokunen kalpeaposki. Panna Nagy

Czegled-kadulta, leskirouva Kemenes, Maria Ban. Toisia ylituomari
ajoi huoneesta ulos. "Menetkö tiehesi, rumilas, ketä lempoa sinäkin
voisit miellyttää?" Eräälle rokonarpiselle tytölle hän sanoi vihaisena:
"Eikö sinulla ole kotona kuvastinta?"
"Ei ole, jalo herra ylituomari."
"Mene sitten, lapseni, etsi jostakin vesisaavi, katso itseäsi siinä ja

tule takaisin, jos sinulla on rohkeutta."
Kaikki nämä yksityisseikat herättivät tarkkatietoisissa piireissä

suurta riemua. Seuraavana päivänä, maanantaina, oli
senaatinistunto, ja senaattoritkin laskettelivat teräviä huomautuksia
tuloksettomasta yrityksestä. "No, onko ketään jo häkissä?"
"Ei yksikään ole kelvannut", vastasi Lestyak äkäisenä.
Herra Gabriel Porossnoki hymyili luontevasti.

"Olemme tehneet vääriä laskelmia. Kecskemetistä olisi helpompi
keisarille löytää neljä äitiä kuin neljä lumoojatarta", sanoi ylituomari
jyrkästi. Hän oli jäykkä ja taipumaton asioissa, jotka hän oli saanut
päähänsä. "Emme voi lähteä ilman kukkavihkoa." Ja samalla hän
ojensi senaattoreille Budan sandshak-pashan ystävällisen kirjeen,
jossa tämä tiedusteluun, minkälainen lahja miellyttäisi hänen
majesteettiaan, vastasi itämaalaisen hämärästi: "Tuokaa hänelle
hevosia, aseita, paistia ja kukkia!"
Kukkia siis pitää olla. Piste. Tähän asti ei tosin kukaan

ilmoittautunut — koska ei ollut syöttiä. Turkin sulttaani ei ole syötti.
Kuka haaveilee Turkin sulttaanista? Olisipa kyseessä joku Tisza-
seudun rikas, juureva mylläri, sirossa, ruumiinmukaisessa
hohtoharmaassa dolmanissa ja saappaissaan, ja etsisipä hän
itselleen laillista puolisoa. Mutta Turkin sulttaani. Hänestähän
tienoomme naiset tietävät vain, että hän on pashojen pasha. Eihän
varpunenkaan anna houkutella itseään loukkaaseen, valkoisista
hevosenjouhista punottuun renkaaseen, ellei olkien lomasta pilkoita
punertavia jyviä. Eihän pikku hiirikään mene satimeen, ellei siinä ole
viekottelemassa perällä vilahteleva valkoinen rasvakimpale.
Kecskemetin naisillekin pitää asettaa syötti. Mikä on tämä syötti? No,
taivasten tekijä, mikä muu kuin — vaatteet! Helmet, nauhat, röyhelöt.
Se on helvetinkin pyhä kolminaisuus. Belsebubista alkaen hallitsee
niiden avulla jokainen paholainen. Yksi huutaa: "Tule, katsele
minua!" Toinen rohkaisee: "Koettele minua!" ja kolmas kuiskii: "Ole
kirottu minun tähteni!"
Mikael Lestyak lähetti senjälkeen päteviä naisia liikkeelle, yhdet

Szegediniin, toiset Budaan sikäläisten turkkilaiskauppiaiden luo
ostamaan kokoon ihanimmat silkkikorukankaat, kulta- ja hopeakukin
kirjailtuja kankaita, hienoja silkkiröyhelöitä, rubiinikimmeltäviä vöitä;
Heitä kehoitettiin kaikessa valikoimaan välkkyvintä upeutta. Heidän
tuli kaiken aikaa pitää mielessä, että kyseessä oli nyt oikeastaan
puettaa prinsessoja tanssiaisiin.
Vanha Lestyak itsekään ei ollut puuhaton, poikansa vaatimuksesta

hän istui vaunuihin ja lähti naapuriherrasperheisiin, Bayn, Fayn ja
Bariuksen, entisten työnantajiansa luokse (sillä hän oli laajalti
maineikas taitavana räätälinä) pyytämään näiltä kaupungin yhteisten
pyrkimysten hyväksi (sillä hekin ovat kaikki Kecskemetin
kiinteistönomistajia) pukuja ompelevia neitosia. Kaikkialla esiytyivät
herrasnaiset, "kaupungin suojelijat", armollisesti. Mestari Matias voi
palata kotiin kokonainen vaununlasti neitoja mukanaan. Kun
tavaratkin pian saapuivat suurissa arkuissa ja kaikki oli erinomaista
lajia, alkoi mestari Matias Lestyakin valvoessa kuumeinen työ päivin
ja öin. Sakset ja sormustimet rapisivat, neulat välähtivät, ja vähitellen
alkoivat monet sametti- ja silkkipalaset saada muotoja. Huntujakin
tehtiin, kahdelle neidolle ja kahdelle rouvalle. Ei tarvinne
huomauttaa, että niin paljon kuin tyttöjä ja rouvia olikin, kaikki
päivisin haastelivat ja öisin uneksivat näistä ihmepuvuista. Kaikki
olisikin luistanut oikein sulavasti, elleivät esimies Bruno ja isä Litkei
olisi sekaantuneet asioiden kulkuun. Näitä ei näet ollenkaan
miellyttänyt koko puuha, että Kecskemetissä olisi turkkilainen hallitus
ja että kaupunki itse sitä vielä anoisi.
"Joka on Jehovan uskottu, se ei saa liehiä Allahia. Sillä

uskottoman palvelijan hylkää toinen herra eikä toinen ota häntä
vastaan. Olkaa varuillanne, Kecskemetin jumalaapelkääväiset
asukkaat." He sättivät uutta ylituomaria ja pitivät kiihoittavia puheita
häntä vastaan, joka ajaa turkkilaisten asiaa tahtoessaan näille
turvata p. Nikolauksen kaupungin, ryöstää neidot ja myy sielujen
autuuden.
Unkarilaissydän on kuin hyvää tuohtunutta taulaa; pienikin kipuna
sen sytyttää. Yhä useammat ja useammat kiihtyivät Seuraavana
sunnuntaina kokoontui pyhän saarnan jälkeen levottomia joukkoja
raatihuoneen edustalle ja uhkaavin elein huudettiin: "Alas ylituomari!
Alas senaattorit!" Varsinkin katolilaiset olivat kuohuissaan.
Luterilaiset, joiden esi-isät toistasataa vuotta sitten olivat muuttaneet
kaupunkiin, ja Tolnasta saapuneet kalvinilaiset, jotka näihin aikoihin
asuivat eristettyinä Hautuumaakadun varsilla, sietivät hieman
paremmin Siebenbürgin protestanttisten ruhtinaiden kanssa
liittoutuneita uskottomia. Protestanteista on turbaani yhtä
eriskummainen kuin tiara.
Herrat Porossnoki ja Agoston kiiruhtivat kiihtyneinä ylituomarin luo.

"Nyt ovat asiat hullusti. Kansa tuolla alhaalla on kuohuissaan. Ettekö
kuule?"
"Kuulen", vastasi tämä välinpitämättömänä.
"Quid tunc? Pitääkö meidän heittää hankkeemme?"
Maks katseli heitä ivahymyten. "Kysymys on siitä, onko se

huonompi senjälkeen kun luostarin esimies sitä vastustaa."
"Eihän se ole käynyt huonommaksi", sanoi Porossnoki, "mutta

meidän täytyy ottaa mahdollisuudetkin laskuihimme. Kahden viikon
perästä käyvät molemmat isät, joiden vaikutusvalta kansaan on niin
suuri, kuokin ja lapioin meitä vastaan."
"Kysymys on edelleen siitä, ratkaisemmeko me Kecskemetin

kohtalot vaiko katu. Luullakseni me. Mitä olemme päättäneet, se
pysyy."
Niin tarmokkaasti ylituomari lausui nämä sanat, että ne tehosivat
Porossnokinkin rautaiseen luonteeseen, vain Kristoffer Agoston olisi
vielä mielellään kiistellyt. "Uhma ei ole aina paikallaan, herra
ylituomari. Paha on jo liikkeellä Sitä vastaan pitää johonkin ryhtyä,
ennenkuin se kasvaa yli voimiemme."
"Mehän ryhdymme johonkin. Puolen tunnin perästä nousette

ratsulle."
"Minäkö?"
"Te ratsastatte salaisena lähettinä erästä tärkeätä asiaa ajamaan."
"Minne?"
"Istukaahan, hyvät herrat, mutta pitäkää suunne lujissa salvoissa,

sillä jos joku teistä ilmaisee mitä nyt sanon, sitä minä rankaisen."
"Hän puhuu kuin diktaattori", murahti helposti loukkaantuva Zaladi.
Sillävälin olivat senaattorit saapuneet, kalpeina, pöhistynein

kasvoin, muutamien katseista puhui kauhu. "Kuulkaa! Kuulkaa!"
"Herra Agoston, te lähdette kurutsijoukon luo, nimittäin Stefan

Csudan puheille."
"Tuon varkaan! No, sen minä löylytän, jos hänet vain missä näen."
"Te ette tee hänelle mitään, neuvottelette sensijaan hänen

kanssaan kohteliaasti ja kysytte häneltä, millä hinnalla hän olisi
taipuvainen vielä kerran ryöstämään esimiehen ja isä Litkin — mutta
heti. Näitä kahta miestä emme tarvitse vähään aikaan."
Kaupunginisien synkät kasvot kirkastuivat hymyilyyn, ei kukaan
enää ollut kalpea. Herra Porossnoki iski iloisena kädellään otsaansa.
"Sepä vain ei olisi pälkähtänyt päähäni. Teidän armonne on
synnynnäinen valtiomies."
"Välttämättömyys on hyvä opettaja, usein parempi kuin kokemus.

Pappeihin ei meillä ole valtaa, emme voi heitä vangita emmekä
heiltä kieltää saarnatuolia. On vain yksi keino, — Stefan Csuda."
"Paljoko saan luvata?" kysäsi hyvätuulisena lähtöätekevä

Agoston.
"Te voitte yrittää selviytyä halvalla, sillä hänellähän ei nykyisin ole

mitään tehtävää, ja kuuluuhan se sitäpaitsi hänen alaansa. Luvatkaa
hänelle puolet siitä mitä hän vaatii."
Puolta tuntia myöhemmin tuprutti jo Agostonin tamma pölyä

Czegled-kadulta, ja kolmannen päivän iltapuolella veivät Csudan
miehet hurskaita munkkeja sidottuina samaa tietä… Näin
menestyksellinen oli herra Kristoffer Agostonin salainen lähettitoimi;
kuolinpäiväänsä asti hän kertoi alati mielellään tästä toimestaan, yhä
mainiommasta, yhä romanttisemmasta, ja harmaatukkaisena hän
aloitti kertomuksensa seuraavin maalailevin sanoin: "Hei kuulkaa! Se
tapahtui siihen aikaan, jolloin minä olin täysivaltaisena lähettinä
hänen majesteettinsa, herra Tökölyn hovissa".
4.
Papit vietiin, ja Kecskemetin kansankapinahanke nukahti, ja läheni
se merkittävä päivä, jolloin senaattorien piti lahjoineen lähteä
Budaan — Turkin keisarin luo. Puvut olivat valmiit ja kolmeksi
viimeiseksi päiväksi ne pantiin kaupungintalolle yleisön
tarkastettavaksi. Siitä syntyi oikea juhlakulkue. Heitukka Pintyö
vartioi suurta pöytää, jolle aarteet oli levitetty houkuttelemaan.
Gyurka vanhus siinä seisoi kerubina, mutta lieskamiekan asemesta
hän heilutti kädessään pähkinäpuusauvaa. Niin ihanasti kaikki
välkkyi, että hänkin näytti sen tartuttamalta. Sellaiset verkot ovat
naiskasvoille suuri jälkiapu. Tavallista sievempiä neitoja hän rohkaisi
toisinaan, sekin oli hänen virkaansa. "Koetelkaapa vain sitä,
kyyhkyseni, tuolla sivuhuoneessa." Ja kuka olisi voinut vastustaa?
Oliko sydäntä, joka ei olisi rajummin sykkinyt, katsetta, joka ei olisi
kiehtoutunut? Kaikki "tuhannen ja yhden yön" aarteet eivät olleet
mitään näiden rinnalla. Kuinka moni tyttö hiipikään arkana kuin
metsäkauris kaikkien näiden ihanuuksien ympärillä ja antoi
katseensa hempeänä niillä harhailla, mutta pian avautuivat silmät
suuriksi ja alkoivat loistaa kuin kaksi liekehtivää kynttilää, jäsenet
alkoivat hiljaa vavahdella, ohimoissa poltti ja takoi rajusti, ja juuri
samaan aikaan sitten alkoi heitukka puhua. "Koetelkaa toki,
kyyhkyseni!" Ja he koettelivat ja olisivat sitten mielellään kuolleet!
Mutta voi sitä, joka tuon loiston kerran oli ylleen pukenut! Ihania
nauhoja pujotettiin heidän kiharoihinsa, vartalo nyöritettiin solakaksi,
heidän ylleen pantiin kummasti ommellut paidat, taivaansiniset
silkkipuvut, joihin oli kirjailtu hopeisia puolikuita, ja lisäksi jalkoihin
karmiininpunaiset pikkusaappaat ja huikaisevat koristukset. "Kas
noin, enkeliseni, tarkastele nyt itseäsi!" Heidän eteensä pantiin
kuvastin, ja tyttäret alkoivat riemusta remuella; he näkivät
keijukaisunta. Ja heidän siinä itseään kummeksiessaan, kaipuun
polttamin sydämin, aaltoilevin povin ja turhamaisuuden nälän
kalvamina, astui kerubi jälleen esiin: "Nyt riittää jo, riisuudu — tai jos
sinun tekee mielesi, niin käy aina noissa pukimissa".
Kelläpä olisi voimaa tällöin sanoa: "Nauran teidät pihalle", avata

nuo ihastuttavat nyöriliivit, kuoria yltään nuo kummat puvut, panna
pois nuo viehkeät karmiinisaappaat, irroittaa tuo säteilevä koristus ja
ryömiä takaisin vanhaan mekkoon. Kaikki antautuivat koettelemaan
— ei ainoakaan pannut noita ihanuuksia mielellään pois.
Vanhemmatkin naiset saivat pian kuumeen, he olisivat mielellään
nähneet itsensä noissa vaatteissa — ja niiden joukossa oli, jumala
paratkoon, sellaisiakin, jotka Szegedinissä olisi noitina poltettu.
Vihdoin täytyi seinälle panna kielto. Vain kauniit, orvot ja köyhät
saivat pukuja koetella. Gyurka kuoma oli asiat kehittänyt niin pitkälle,
hän ratkaisi, kuka oli kaunis. Pariksella oli vain yksi omena, hänellä
niitä oli koko korillinen. Hänen suosiotaan hankituinkin kiehtovin
hymyin, kinkuin ja paistoksin, täysinäinen viiniastiakin löysi tänne
tiensä milloin sieltä milloin täältä. Sillä hänen virkansa ei suinkaan
ollut vähäpätöinen. Se tuli niin sanoaksemme vasta, myöhemmin
ilmi, kun kymmenen parinkymmenen vuoden perästä naisilla vain
sikäli oli arvoa, jos he voivat sanoa: "Ohho, minä en olekaan entisen
teeren lapsia, minunkin ruumiini on kerran prameillut lestyakilaisissa
vaatteissa." Siitä tuli miltei sananparsi. Kuinka siis silloin, kun asia
vielä oli lämpimimmillään, voi olla yhdentekevää, kuka sai vaatteita
pitää kuka ei, kuka virallisesti tunnustettiin kauniiksi ja kuka
kelvottomaksi havaittiin. Monta karvasta polttavaa kyyneltä silloin
vuodatettiinkin. En tahdo vanhusta syyttää virkavaltansa
väärinkäytöstä enkä siitä, että hän olisi ottanut vastaan lahjuksia
(hieman vaikeata olisi syytöstä todistaakin nykyisin kahden
vuosisadan perästä), mutta tosiseikkana pysyy, että hän monesti
käyttäytyi aika lailla tahdittomasti. Niin esimerkiksi mustalaistyttö
kohtauksessa.
Saapui näet kerran paikalle pikkuraukka tyttö, ryysyissään, paljain
jaloin, naarmuisena, ahmi suurin silmin aarteita ja jäi sitten suu auki
seisomaan. Kuin hohtavat Idän helmet välkkyivät hänen valkoiset
hampaansa punaisessa suussa. (Se vanha aasi ei huomannut niitä
ollenkaan.) Hän oli vielä lapsi, hoikka, mutta voimakasrakenteinen.
Kauan siveli hän aarteita, vavahteli, kunnes vihdoin puhutteli
heitukkaa: "Entä minä — saanko minäkin?"
Gyuri kuoma kohmettui ensin jääksi, sanoi sitten halveksien:

"Miksi hevosenkenkää kilpikonnan jalkaan? Mene hemmettiin!"
Oli kuin jokainen sana olisi ollut pilvi, joka kuuroina valui tytön
kasvoille, niin murheelliseksi kävi lapsi. Tämäkin villinä kasvanut
oravainen karkoitettiin pureksimasta. Hän kääntyi pois ja pyyhkäisi
kädellään silmistä kumpuavat kyyneleet.
Onneksi — tai ehkä onnettomuudeksi — oli ylituomari parastaikaa

huoneessa ja huomasi hänen murheensa. Hän kosketti kädellään
häntä olalle. Pelästyneenä kohottausi hän suoraksi. "Valitse näistä
puvuista joku ja pukeudu!"
Arkaillen katsahti hän puhujaan. "Tuo ei salli." (Hän viittasi ilmein

Pintyöhön.)
"Entä jos minä sallin, minä, kaupungin ylituomari."
Tyttö hymyili kyyneltensä lomasta häntä tarkastellen. "Sinäkö

täällä käsketkin? Todellako?"
"Pintyö", virkkoi ylituomari hymyillen, "tuokaa tälle pikkuiselle

kauneimmat vaatteet. Katsokaamme, mitä hänestä voi tehdä."
Neljännestunnin kuluttua he sen näkivät. Kun hän astui
pukukammiosta, pestynä ja pyntättynä, humahti halki huoneen
ihmettelyn sorina. Onko tuo vain unikuva vai elävä olento? Hän oli
kuin häikäisevän kaunis kuninkaantytär. Kirsikanpunainen silkkipuku
esitti ihania muotoja, nuttu soljui sulavana polviin saakka. Hänen
huulensa kilpailivat punassa rubiinien kanssa ja hänen sysimusta
palmikkonsa valui niin pitkälle alas, ettei hänen ruumiissaan ollut
ainoatakaan kohtaa, jonka ympäri se ei olisi voinut kiertyä.
"Kenen tytär olet?" kysyi ylituomari ihastuneena.
"Vanhan Burün, jonka tapana on soittaa 'Sievää husaaria'". ("Sievä

husaari" oli kuuluisa csardas-tanssi Tiszarantaman uutisasutuksilla.)
"Mikä nimesi?"
"Czinna."
"Lähdetkö kerällämme Budaan?"
Hän kohautti välinpitämättömästi olkapäitään.
"Jos lähdet, saat pitää puvun."
"Minä lähden."
Näin löydettiin kukkavihon ensimäinen kukka. Toisetkin saatiin.

Täytyi vain monista valita sopivimmat. Pellavapää Maria Bari
orvokinsinisine silmineen, ihastuttavine vartaloineen, ylväs, komea
Magdolna ja pyöreä, rehevä Agnes Pal punaisin poskin, oikea
puhkeava malva. Ei koskaan sulttaani saisi suudella kauniimpia, ei
koskaan Firdusi ole laulanut ihanammista.
Nyt voivat he lähteä matkalle. Sunnuntaina saapui karja, sata
uljasta härkää, kaikkien kaulassa kilkuttivat iloiset kellot, kaikkien
sarvet olivat nauhoin koreillut, saapuivat hevoset, viisikymmentä
salskeaa varsaa, kullakin hopeinen tiuku kaulassa. Kaksiin vaunuihin
istuivat parittain tytöt — kaksi heistä oli rouvaa, mitä "väärennetyintä"
rouvaa, sillä he tekeytyivät vain niiksi. Sinisiin, hopeasoljin
kirjailtuihin vaippoihinsa kietoutuneina astuivat herrat senaattoritkin
vaunuihin. Ensimäisissä istuivat ylituomari ja Frans Kriston,
takalaudalla Josef Inokai. Yksi kuljettaa ratsuja, toinen nautoja.
Herra Agoston, joka matkasi seuraavissa vaunuissa, kohosi
lähettiläästä kukkatarhuriksi — sellaistahan on politiikka. Gabriel
Porossnoki kantoi aseita upeassa silkkikotelossa. Kaupungintalon
kuudes, pieni epämuodostunut Georg Imecs, ei tosin näyttänyt
viehättävältä, mutta hän puhui hyvin turkkia ja tataria, hänet otettiin
senvuoksi mukaan "voitelijaksi". Kokoontuneen joukon 'eljen'-huuto
raikuu, kotiinjääneet naiset tempaavat päästänsä liinat niitä
heiluttaakseen, ajurit hoputtavat hevosiaan, csikosit [hevospaimenet]
läimäyttelevät ruoskillaan, ja näin lähtee tuo loistava matkue musiikin
soidessa, sillä sadan härän kellot kalkattavat ja viisikymmentä
hopeatiukua kilisee. Matka on yksitoikkoista, emme kuvaa sitä,
aroilla on kaikki samanlaista. Tienoot, kaupungit, kylät, tasangot
kangastuksineen, joista vain painuva päivä tekee lopun, harmaa
maa, josta valju syysaurinko loihtii esiin kirjavia kukkia, ovat
kaikkialla samanlaisia. Maatila muistuttaa toista kuin kyynärän
kangaspala toista palasta, joka on leikattu samasta pakasta. Siellä
täällä näkee yksinäisen uutisasunnon, valkoisen talopahasen,
kaivon. Asutun tienoon päässä oli tuulimyllyjä levitetyin siivin. On
todellakin outoa, kuinka yksitoikkoisia pusztan kaupungitkin olivat.
Jokaisella oli jotakin mistä rehennellä. Debreczinillä lukionsa,
Szegedinillä Matiaksen kirkkonsa, Kecskemetillä Nikolauksen

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On the Politics of Ugliness 1st ed.

Edition Sara Rodrigues

The Politics of Wellbeing 1st ed. Edition Ian Bache

The Independence of the News Media: Francophone

Labour Under Corbyn: Constraints on Radical Politics in

Indigenous Digital Life: The Practice and Politics of

Comedy and the Politics of Representation 1st ed.

The Impact of European Integration on West European

Double-Edged Politics on Women’s Rights in the MENA

Final Proof Rodrigues Ottolengui

ISBN 978-3-319-76782-6 ISBN 978-3-319-76783-3 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935188

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Printed on acid-free paper

1 Introduction: On the Politics of Ugliness 1

Part I Desire, Relationality, Erotics 51

3 Listening to the Ugliness of Hetero-Erotic Miscommunication

4 “Put on All Your Make-Up and Cry It Off in Public:”

5 I Want to Kill Myself 91

6 The Lesson of the Cockroach: Towards an Ethics of Ugliness 103

Part II The Spatio-Temporalities of Ugliness 125

7 (Un)Mapping the City Beautiful: Orlando Florida’s “Ugly”

8 New Body Project(s): “Excess” Skin in the Context of Massive

9 The Indiscreet Charms of Spatial Ugliness: An Enquiry into

10 Stigma Stains: The Somaesthetics of Institutional Abjection 193

Part III Materialities and Representations 217

11 Agatha’s Breasts on a Plate: “Ugliness” as Resistance

12 Imagining Ugliness: Failed Femininities, Shame, and Disgust

13 Ugliness as Colonial Violence: Mediations of Murdered

15 Butler’s Monsters: The Grotesque and the Black Communal

Part IV Ugliness as Generative Power 335

16 On the Limitations of the Rhetoric of Beauty: Embracing

18 Teaching While Ugly: A Story of Racial Pulchritude,

19 The Ugly Gaze 411

About the Editors

About the Contributors

of Delaware. She has published extensively on French nineteenth-century art,

German anthology on queer theory and psychoanalysis Queering Psychoanalysis.

Natasha Lushetich is Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Practices and Visual

habilitation research project on “Trans*Writing Immanence and

Fig. 3.1 David during orgasm, Twentynine Palms (2003) 61

Fig. 10.5 Observation Room, River House (2014), photographer

Ugliness or unsightliness is much more than a quality or property of one’s

© The Author(s) 2018 1

practices, and institutions of power. To this end, we trace what it means to

 isual Injustice: Relationality and the Spatio-­

Such a view tends to naturalize ugliness as a property of objects, people, places,

bodies arise in this reading as dangerous and despised artifacts indicative of

to ideals of good health, upper-classness, and whiteness—“matter in place,”

Materialities and Representations of Ugliness

expected to perform normative femininity supremely, with no margin for error,

recently argued that “lookism”—discrimination on the basis of appearance—

Desiring Ugliness: Ugliness as Generative Power

Fein’s photographs of Detroit and Michael Day’s photographs of Chernobyl);

Importantly, as we have been discussing, ugliness is not one thing, and it is

Situating Ugliness, Politics, and Interdisciplinarity

Turkkuri Valentin Katona piti pojan puolta.

"Täysikasvuista nuorukaista ei saa enää kohdella kisällinä eikä

"Hoitakaa te omaa vasikkaanne", vastasi räätäli karkeasti. "Mitäpä

1 Introduction: On the Politics of Ugliness 1

Part I Desire, Relationality, Erotics 51

3 Listening to the Ugliness of Hetero-Erotic Miscommunication

4 “Put on All Your Make-Up and Cry It Off in Public:”

5 I Want to Kill Myself 91

6 The Lesson of the Cockroach: Towards an Ethics of Ugliness 103

Part II The Spatio-Temporalities of Ugliness 125

7 (Un)Mapping the City Beautiful: Orlando Florida’s “Ugly”

8 New Body Project(s): “Excess” Skin in the Context of Massive

9 The Indiscreet Charms of Spatial Ugliness: An Enquiry into

10 Stigma Stains: The Somaesthetics of Institutional Abjection 193

Part III Materialities and Representations 217

11 Agatha’s Breasts on a Plate: “Ugliness” as Resistance

12 Imagining Ugliness: Failed Femininities, Shame, and Disgust

13 Ugliness as Colonial Violence: Mediations of Murdered

15 Butler’s Monsters: The Grotesque and the Black Communal

Part IV Ugliness as Generative Power 335

16 On the Limitations of the Rhetoric of Beauty: Embracing

18 Teaching While Ugly: A Story of Racial Pulchritude,

19 The Ugly Gaze 411

Fig. 3.1 David during orgasm, Twentynine Palms (2003) 61

isual Injustice: Relationality and the Spatio-

Materialities and Representations of Ugliness

Desiring Ugliness: Ugliness as Generative Power

Situating Ugliness, Politics, and Interdisciplinarity