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9780823293919

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It is just as hard to face our hopes as our suffering,' observes Rachel Weiss in this empathically argued account of living in the wake of once-promising, truncated social transformations. This redemptive poetics of history inhabits the imagination of the present moment radically altered by inherited traumas, idealisms, and messianic hopes. These encounters align the horizon under a night sky flashing with the stars of regardless and henceforward -- Roberto Tejada, University of Houston Casting her supremely intelligent eye on the simultaneous possibilities and limits of art, Rachel Weiss offers a far-reaching study of performance, painting, and film in the aftermath of societal convulsions and revolutions. She creatively rethinks how and why art comes to work in societies troubled by censorship, dictatorship, state violence, and trauma, on the one hand, and dreams of revolution, collectivism, and social justice on the other. Crucially, Weiss's impassioned account of the stories that art can offer about these extreme historical realities takes on a new relevance and urgency in our current world, where authoritarianism, fake news, and alternative facts increasingly appear to rule the day. -- Saloni Mathur, University of California, Los Angeles

'It is just as hard to face our hopes as our suffering, ' observes Rachel Weiss in this empathically argued account of living in the wake of once-promising, truncated social transformations. By looking at art, literature, and cinema--tellings that reconfigure Germany's post World War II reconstruction, the Cuban Revolution, Chile's 1973 coup d'etat, and Romania's 1989 Revolution--Weiss offers a sharable inheritance for a world 'haunted and besieged by its malingering pasts.' This redemptive poetics of history inhabits the imagination of the present moment radically altered by inherited traumas, idealisms, and messianic hopes. These encounters align the horizon under a night sky flashing with the stars of regardless and henceforward.--Roberto Tejada, University of Houston The title of this book, Now What?, asks the direction-seeking question of our times. Casting her supremely intelligent eye on the simultaneous possibilities and limits of art, Rachel Weiss offers a far-reaching study of performance, painting, and film in the aftermath of societal convulsions and revolutions. Focusing on Cuba, Chile, post-1968 Germany, and post-Communist Romania, with their unstable regimes of truth and lies and notoriously unsettled, even illegible, histories, this book creatively rethinks how and why art comes to work in societies troubled by censorship, dictatorship, state violence, and trauma, on the one hand, and dreams of revolution, collectivism, and social justice on the other. Crucially, Weiss' impassioned account of the stories that art can offer about these extreme historical realities takes on a new relevance and urgency in our current world, where authoritarianism, fake news, and alternative facts increasingly appear to rule the day.--Saloni Mathur, University of California, Los Angeles

'It is just as hard to face our hopes as our suffering, ' observes Rachel Weiss in this empathically argued account of living in the wake of once-promising, truncated social transformations. By looking at art, literature, and cinema--tellings that reconfigure Germany's post World War II reconstruction, the Cuban Revolution, Chile's 1973 coup d'etat, and Romania's 1989 Revolution--Weiss offers a sharable inheritance for a world 'haunted and besieged by its malingering pasts.' This redemptive poetics of history inhabits the imagination of the present moment radically altered by inherited traumas, idealisms, and messianic hopes. These encounters align the horizon under a night sky flashing with the stars of regardless and henceforward.--Roberto Tejada, University of Houston

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Rachel Weiss is Professor of Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of To and From Utopia in the New Cuban Art.

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