{"product_id":"what-remains-9780231182713","title":"What Remains","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJonathan 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. \u003ci\u003eWhat Remains\u003c\/i\u003e traces the effects of these artifacts, arguing for a rethinking of the role of the everyday as a site of reckoning with difficult pasts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this wonderful book, Jonathan Bach shows the complexity of East Germans' adjustment to their new reality. Examining preferred consumption items, personal museums of things from the past, demolitions and rebuildings, and memorializations of the Wall, he goes well beyond fashionable invocations of \"nostalgia\" to explore unification's assaults on personhood and identity, on senses of place and history. A must read! -- Katherine Verdery, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat Remains\u003c\/i\u003e 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, Princeton University\u003cbr\u003eJonathan Bach weaves his way elegantly and insightfully through Berlin’s postunification 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 für Europäische Ethnologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat Remains\u003c\/i\u003e traces a quarter century of present pasts—a minefield of forced dispossessions and reappropriations in the struggles of forging German unification. It offers a vibrant encounter with the residues of Germany’s first socialist state and concludes with a moving tribute to a current generation of Nachgeborenen haunted by the failures and the promises of the past. -- Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University\u003cbr\u003e[\u003ci\u003eWhat Remains\u003c\/i\u003e] weaves together theories of representation, time, and memory to examine  the complicated legacy of East Germany’s material culture. . . . \u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eHighly recommended. * Choice *\u003cbr\u003eJonathan Bach’s superb analysis of how state and non-state actors make sense of, display, and appropriate the material remains of the GDR in \u003ci\u003eWhat Remains: Everyday Encounters with the Socialist Past in Germany\u003c\/i\u003e could not be more timely. His careful attention to materials that became obsolete almost overnight — consumer goods, the Berlin Wall, the “People’s Palace” — has enormous relevance for the pressing questions regarding the schism(s) in German memory. -- Benjamin Nienass * Public Seminar *\u003cbr\u003eJonathan Bach makes an important contribution to the scholarship on the politics of memory in Germany. . . . Eloquently but accessibly written, with expert translations of sometimes very difficult-to-translate German terms. . . . This book illustrates the importance of delving deeply into everyday culture in order to develop a sophisticated understanding of politics. -- Jenny Wüstenberg * Perspectives on Politics *\u003cbr\u003eThis study in material culture succeeds in walking us through, at times literally, what reads like a magical landscape in which the trash, desiderata, and fragments of yesteryear . . . become visual feasts and official memories. . . . Thought-provoking . . .  refreshing and incisive. -- Andrew Lass * American Anthropologist *\u003cbr\u003eThis highly readable account weaves together public and private, the big and the small, to offer a fresh take on the politics of memory in united Germany. . . . As an insightful, innovative take on this important topic, \u003ci\u003eWhat Remains\u003c\/i\u003e is likely to endure. -- Kyrill Kunakhovich * German Studies Review *\u003cbr\u003eBach’s book takes the reader on a dazzling journey through selective aspects of the German past and present. It dwells little on the study of political agents and organizational structures, and perhaps because, and not in spite, of that, it makes for stimulating material and a highly recommended reading. -- Lutz Kaelber * American Journal of Sociology *\u003cbr\u003eInsightful, original, beautifully written, and richly illustrated with documentary photographs...The book will be of interest for memory-studies scholars, as well as social scientists taking the role of material culture in social processes seriously. * Contemporary Sociology *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eList of Illustrations\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003e1. \"The Taste Remains\"\u003cbr\u003e2. Collecting Communism\u003cbr\u003e3. Unbuilding\u003cbr\u003e4. The Wall After the Wall\u003cbr\u003eEpilogue: Exit Ghost\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eBibliography\u003cbr\u003eIndex","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400318918999,"sku":"9780231182713","price":23.4,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780231182713.jpg?v=1730470375","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/what-remains-9780231182713","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}