The Handbook of Courage: Cultural Opposition and its Heritage in Eastern Europe (2018)

“The Courage Handbook ushers its reader into the world of the compellingly rich heritage of cultural opposition in Eastern Europe. It is intended primarily to further a subtle understanding of the complex and multifaceted nature of cultural opposition and its legacy from the perspective of the various collections held in public institutions or by private individuals across the region.

Through its focus on material heritage, the handbook provides new perspectives on the history of dissent and cultural non-conformism in the former socialist countries of Central, Eastern, and South-eastern Europe.

The volume is comprised of contributions by over 60 authors from a range of different academic and national backgrounds who share their insights into the topic. It offers focused discussions from comparative and transnational perspectives of the key themes and prevailing forms of opposition in the region, including non-conformist art, youth sub-cultures, intellectual dissent, religious groups, underground rock, avantgarde theater, exile, traditionalism, ethnic revivalism, censorship, and surveillance.”

Edited by Balázs Apor, Péter Apor and Sándor Horváth
Publisher Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 2018
ISBN 9789634161424, 9634161421
634 pages

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A Journey Through London Subculture: 1980s to Now (2013)

“A Journey Through London Subculture: 1980s to Now illustrates a perceived thread of creativity between the post-punk era and the present day.

Gilbert & George, John Maybury, House of Beauty & Culture, Tom Dixon, Jeffrey Hinton, Bodymap, St John, Alexander McQueen, Martino Gamper, Julie Verhoeven, Giles Deacon, Charlie Porter, Chisenhale Gallery, Lucky PDF, Vogue Fabrics Nightclub, Sibling, J W Anderson, Bethan Laura Wood, Matthew Darbyshire and Louise Gray are amongst the 60 figures from London’s scene involved in the project.”

Publisher Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2013
76 pages

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Felix Stalder: The Digital Condition (2016–)

“Our daily lives, our culture and our politics are now shaped by the digital condition as large numbers of people involve themselves in contentious negotiations of meaning in ever more dimensions of life, from the trivial to the profound. They are making use of the capacities of complex communication infrastructures, currently dominated by social mass media such as Twitter and Facebook, on which they have come to depend.

Amidst a confusing plurality, Felix Stalder argues that are three key constituents of this condition: the use of existing cultural materials for one’s own production, the way in which new meaning is established as a collective endeavour, and the underlying role of algorithms and automated decision-making processes that reduce and give shape to massive volumes of data. These three characteristics define what Stalder calls ‘the digital condition’. Stalder also examines the profound political implications of this new culture. We stand at a crossroads between post-democracy and the commons, a concentration of power among the few or a genuine widening of participation, with the digital condition offering the potential for starkly different outcomes.

This ambitious and wide-ranging theory of our contemporary digital condition will be of great interest to students and scholars in media and communications, cultural studies, and social, political and cultural theory, as well as to a wider readership interested in the ways in which culture and politics are changing today.”

First published in German as Kultur der Digitalität, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2016.

Translated by Valentine Pakis
Publisher Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2018
ISBN 9781509519590, 1509519599
xi+204 pages

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