Description

Book Synopsis
This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in three late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas—Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York.

Trade Review
"Fascinating reading, this is a profound, original, and timely book about the world's current obsession with the past, as well as the form which this obsession has taken: memory. Huyssen considers what our obsession with memory means, and examines a number of material forms that it has taken, as well as the social, cultural, and aesthetic functions they have served." -Kaja Silverman, University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents
Present pasts - media, politics, amnesia; monumental seduction - Christo in Berlin; the voids of Berlin; after the war - Berlin as palimpsest; fear of mice - the Times Square redevelopment; memory sites in an expanded field - the Memory Park in Buenos Aires; Doris Salcedo's memory sculpture unland - the Orphan's Tunic; of mice and mimesis - reading Spiegelman's Maus with Adorno; rewritings and new beginnings - W.G. Sebald and the literature on the air war; twin memories - after-images of 9/11.

Present Pasts

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    A Hardback by Andreas Huyssen

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    RRP £87.00 – you save £8.70 (10%)

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      Book details

      Publisher Stanford University Press
      Published 15 January 2003
      ISBN-13 9780804745604
      978-0804745604
      ISBN-10 0804745609
      Also in:
      The arts: general topics

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in three late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas—Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York.

      Trade Review
      "Fascinating reading, this is a profound, original, and timely book about the world's current obsession with the past, as well as the form which this obsession has taken: memory. Huyssen considers what our obsession with memory means, and examines a number of material forms that it has taken, as well as the social, cultural, and aesthetic functions they have served." -Kaja Silverman, University of California, Berkeley

      Table of Contents
      Present pasts - media, politics, amnesia; monumental seduction - Christo in Berlin; the voids of Berlin; after the war - Berlin as palimpsest; fear of mice - the Times Square redevelopment; memory sites in an expanded field - the Memory Park in Buenos Aires; Doris Salcedo's memory sculpture unland - the Orphan's Tunic; of mice and mimesis - reading Spiegelman's Maus with Adorno; rewritings and new beginnings - W.G. Sebald and the literature on the air war; twin memories - after-images of 9/11.

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