Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980 (2011)

“Abandoning the usual Cold War–oriented narrative of postwar European protest and opposition movements, this volume offers an innovative, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive perspective on two decades of protest and social upheaval in postwar Europe. It examines the mutual influences and interactions among dissenters in Western Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries, and the non-aligned European countries, and shows how ideological and political developments in the East and West were interconnected through official state or party channels as well as a variety of private and clandestine contacts. Focusing on issues arising from the cross-cultural transfer of ideas, the adjustments to institutional and political frameworks, and the role of the media in staging protest, the volume examines the romanticized attitude of Western activists to violent liberation movements in the Third World and the idolization of imprisoned RAF members as martyrs among left-wing circles across Western Europe.”

Edited by Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder and Joachim Scharloth
Publisher Berghahn Books, New York, 2011
Protest, Culture, and Society series, 7
ISBN 9780857451064, 0857451065
vi+347 pages
via publisher

Reviews: Caroline Hoefferle (J Study of Radicalism, 2012), Benoît Challand (Memory Studies, 2013), Rosemary H.T. O’Kane (Political Studies Rev, 2013), Sarah Žabić (Peace&Change, 2013), Matthias Dapprich (J Cold War Studies, 2014), Francis D. Raška (European Legacy, 2016).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF

Sean Cubitt: Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies (2016)

“While digital media give us the ability to communicate with and know the world, their use comes at the expense of an immense ecological footprint and environmental degradation. In Finite Media Sean Cubitt offers a large-scale rethinking of theories of mediation by examining the environmental and human toll exacted by mining and the manufacture, use, and disposal of millions of phones, computers, and other devices. The way out is through an eco-political media aesthetics, in which people use media to shift their relationship to the environment and where public goods and spaces are available to all. Cubitt demonstrates this through case studies ranging from the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang to an image of Saturn taken during NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission, suggesting that affective responses to images may generate a populist environmental politics that demands better ways of living and being. Only by reorienting our use of media, Cubitt contends, can we overcome the failures of political elites and the ravages of capital.”

Publisher Duke University Press, 2016
Cultural Politics Books series
ISBN 9780822362920. 0822362929
256 pages
via wX

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (updated on 2021-1-29)

Wolfgang Ernst: Stirrings in the Archives: Order from Disorder (2002/2015)

“Like most of Wolfgang Ernst’s work, Das Rumoren der Archiv explored the concept of archival and media theory from a current cultural digital context. Ernst challenges the traditional perspective of the cultural heritage institution and how it relied on media for creating, storing and disseminating digital information. Archives have a place in a digital society, and the archivist’s role will be more increasingly vital in the future. As Ernst points out, his work will show a way out of the archive, away from the notion that the era of archive is coming to an end.

Here is the long-awaited English translation of this seminal work exploring cultural heritage before the archives, throughout history, and from today into the future.

Ernst’s work emphasized a need to recognize media as a method for capturing and preserving our collective cultural identity. It is vital that archivists promoted a greater awareness of how media technology augmented the creation, management, and dissemination of digital content.”

First published as Das Rumoren der Archive. Ordnung aus Unordnung, Merve, Berlin, 2002.

Translated by Adam Siegel
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2015
ISBN 9781442253957, 1442253959
v+101 pages

Reviews: Eric Willey (Archival Issues, 2015), Simran Thadani (RBM, 2016), Alexandrina Buchanan (Archives and Records, 2016).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF