Description
Book SynopsisJonathan Bach examines the afterlife of East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall, as things and places from the socialist past continue to circulate and shape the politics of memory.
What Remains traces the effects of these artifacts, arguing for a rethinking of the role of the everyday as a site of reckoning with difficult pasts.
Trade ReviewWhat Remains is a perceptive and - perhaps more crucially - a very sympathetic account of multiple ways through which ordinary people try to take hold of their politically controversial past. Bach creates an intricate but highly accessible story about the past that is not quite gone. -- Serguei Oushakine, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University Jonathan Bach weaves his way elegantly and insightfully through Berlin's post-unification landscape, highlighting the absences, unsettlements and inheritances from the past. In doing so, he shows not only the potency of what remains but also the creativity with which it is addressed and new futures forged. This is a wonderful, highly readable yet deeply sophisticated book. -- Sharon Macdonald, Institut fur Europaische Ethnologie, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. "The Taste Remains" 2. Collecting Communism 3. Unbuilding 4. The Wall After the Wall Epilogue: Exit Ghost Notes Bibliography Index
