{"product_id":"urban-phantasmagorias-9780367859152","title":"Urban Phantasmagorias","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eUrban Phantasmagorias\u003c\/em\u003e examines the legacies of socialist housing in the city of Bucharest during the period of communist rule in Romania. The book explores the manner in which the socialist state reconfigured the city through concrete acts of demolition and construction, as well as indirectly through legal frameworks aimed at the regulation of womenâs reproductive agency, in an attempt to materialize its idea of modernity. It follows the effects of this state agenda with a focus on the period between 1965 and 1989 through an investigation of the transformations, representations, meanings, and uses of domestic spaces. The book draws on Walter Benjaminâs concept of phantasmagoria, which provides a critical framework through which it articulates the dynamic relationship between ideology, architecture, and everyday practices, and reassesses their impact upon individual subjectivity and agency. The woman emerges as a central subject of the book, upon whom the phantasmagoric effe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"This book offers an original history of socialist Bucharest, Romania, between 1965 and 1989. It addresses housing as gendered infrastructure, delivering ‘communist modernity’ through the control of domestic life and maternity. Yet what was the subjective response to these transformations? How do we as scholars access them? By drawing on Walter Benjamin’s account of urban phantasmagoria and moving between archives, interviews, art and film, Statica produces an extraordinarily rich analysis of how (female) subjects experienced, imagined, and responded to socialist modernization – as fragmented and conflictual – a brilliant account relevant to all scholars of twentieth-century housing and urbanism.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBarbara Penner\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cem\u003eProfessor of Architectural Humanities, UCL\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eUrban Phantasmagorias \u003c\/i\u003eis Iulia Statica’s theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich examination of how the infrastructures of communist modernity in Bucharest produced a specific female subject. Collectively imagined as workers, wives, and mothers, women in Ceaușescu’s Romania found their bodies and identities colonized by a state willing to aggressively expropriate their productive and reproductive labor. This process was accelerated by deliberate projects to nuclearize the traditional extended family through an architectural reimagining of urban living. Especially fascinating are the thick descriptions of typical communist homes and the ways that physical spaces shaped Romanian women’s ideas of \"modern\" domesticities.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKristen Ghodsee, \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003eProfessor and Chair of Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In this masterly and well-argued \u003ci\u003eUrban Phantasmagorias\u003c\/i\u003e, Iulia Statica does more than unveiling the layers and fragments of Bucharest’s communist modernity and domesticities. She turns Walter Benjamin and, in the process, urban theory upside down, by juxtaposing Benjamin’s musing on urban Paris, on the one hand, and on the other, Bucharest longing for a future modernity, which is already our past, and a past Statica carefully reaches through a critical archeology of urban fragmentation.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAntónio Tomás\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cem\u003eUniversity of Johannesburg, author of\u003c\/em\u003e In the Skin of the City: Spatial Transformation in Luanda \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e1. Phantasmagoria: From West to East 2. Between Orientalism and Modernity: Urban and Domestic Topographies 3. Communist Bucharest 4. Urban Phantasmagorias 5. Gender, Maternity and the Modern Communist Home 6. The Phantasmagoria of the Communist Interior\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Taylor \u0026 Francis","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51018080649559,"sku":"9780367859152","price":36.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780367859152.jpg?v=1750775566","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/urban-phantasmagorias-9780367859152","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}