Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression

In this startlingly original, theoretically nuanced, wide-ranging exploration of inexpressiveness
as an underexamined performance repertoire in Black arts and culture, Tina Post makes a
landmark contribution to the field of race and aesthetics. Deadpan explores the fine structure of a
rhetorically intricate aesthetic technique as malleable in its uses as affect itself, and it does so
with remarkable wit and precision.

A stellar study filled with dazzling prose, poignant persuasion, ethical intervention, and
intellectual adventure. While dominant US culture regards blackness as hyper-expressive,
melodramatic, and spectacular, Tina Post carefully directs our attention to the subtle and
sometimes inscrutable art of black inexpression. Across a sweeping repertoire--from nineteenth-
century daguerreotypes to twentieth-century avant-garde performance to twenty-first century
memes and beyond--she affirms 'illegibility's efficacy for the black subject.' She knows and
shows that expressionlessness has been vital to black aesthetics, resistance, refusal, self-defense,
self-making, and world-making. As I read about deadpan, my own face was anything but: Post's
arresting arguments and gorgeous sentences made my black visage light up with intrigue,
wonder, and delight.