Argues that aesthetic pleasure plays a key role in both racial practices and struggles against racistdominationFor Pleasure proposes that experimental aesthetics shaped race in the twentiethcentury United Statesby creating transformative scenes of pleasure. Rachel Jane Carroll explains how aesthetic pleasure isfundamental to the production and circulation of racial meaning in the United States through a study ofexperimental work by authors and artists of color.For Pleasure offers methods for reading experimental literature and art produced by racially minoritizedauthors and artists working in and around the US including Isaac Julien Nella Larsen Yoko Ono JackWhitten Byron Kim Glenn Ligon Zora Neale Hurston Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Cici Wu. Along theway we learn what a racist joke has to do with the history of monochrome painting if beauty has a partto play in social change and whether whimsy should be taken seriously as a political affect. Carrolldraws attention to key connections between aesthetic pleasure and experimentation through theirshared capacity for worldbuilding. Neither aesthetic pleasure nor experimental forms are liberatory inand of themselves however both can interrupt defamiliarize and rearrange our habits of aestheticjudgment.