Reparative aesthetics : witnessing in contemporary art photography / Susan Best.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-207) and index.

Guilt and shame: current debates in affect studies -- Witnessing fever -- Shame and the convict stain: Anne Ferran's Lost to Worlds -- Fiona Pardington: Colonialism and repair in the Southern Seas -- Rosângela Rennó: "Little stories of the Downtrodden and the Vanquished' -- Our dark side: Milagros de la Torre's The Lost Steps.

By offering a new way of thinking about the role of politically engaged art, Susan Best opens up a new aesthetic field: reparative aesthetics. The book identifies an innovative aesthetic on the part of women photographers from the southern hemisphere, who against the dominant modes of criticality in political art, look at how cultural production can be reparative. "Reparative Aesthetics" contributes an entirely new theory to the interdisciplinary fields of aesthetics, affect studies, feminist theory, politics and photography. Conceptually innovative and fiercely original this book will move us beyond old political and cultural stalemates and into new terrain for analysis and reflection.