Race, Urban Heat, and the Aesthetics of Thermoception

Drawing on recent research on the intersections of race and atmosphere, this essay considers thermal sensation as a nonrepresentational sensory modality for staging atmospheric racial disparities. I begin with discussions of research on the physical, psychological, and affective consequences of heat exposure and scholarship on the disparities encoded in thermal landscapes—especially “urban heat islands” where Black and Brown communities are disproportionately exposed to extreme temperatures that exacerbate preexisting health vulnerabilities. I consider a range of literary and cultural works by Nella Larsen, Chester Himes, and Spike Lee that represent the physical and affective implications of thermal disparities, and conclude with an extended discussion of the nonrepresentational, embodied affordances of thermal sensation in Rashid Johnson’s restaging of LeRoi Jones’s Dutchman in a Manhattan sauna.What kinds of knowledge and affective involvement might be afforded by a direct, nonrepresentational aesthetics of thermoception? . . . How might an immersive aesthetics of thermoception sensitize audiences to the spatial and atmospheric dynamics of racialization?