Fred Turner: The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties (2013)

“We commonly think of the psychedelic sixties as an explosion of creative energy and freedom that arose in direct revolt against the social restraint and authoritarian hierarchy of the early Cold War years. Yet, as Fred Turner reveals in The Democratic Surround, the decades that brought us the Korean War and communist witch hunts also witnessed an extraordinary turn toward explicitly democratic, open, and inclusive ideas of communication and with them new, flexible models of social order. Surprisingly, he shows that it was this turn that brought us the revolutionary multimedia and wild-eyed individualism of the 1960s counterculture.

In this prequel to his book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Turner rewrites the history of postwar America, showing how in the 1940s and ’50s American liberalism offered a far more radical social vision than we now remember. Turner tracks the influential mid-century entwining of Bauhaus aesthetics with American social science and psychology. From the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the New Bauhaus in Chicago and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Turner shows how some of the most well-known artists and intellectuals of the forties developed new models of media, new theories of interpersonal and international collaboration, and new visions of an open, tolerant, and democratic self in direct contrast to the repression and conformity associated with the fascist and communist movements. He then shows how their work shaped some of the most significant media events of the Cold War, including Edward Steichen’s Family of Man exhibition, the multimedia performances of John Cage, and, ultimately, the psychedelic Be-Ins of the sixties. Turner demonstrates that by the end of the 1950s this vision of the democratic self and the media built to promote it would actually become part of the mainstream, even shaping American propaganda efforts in Europe.

Overturning common misconceptions of these transformational years, The Democratic Surround shows just how much the artistic and social radicalism of the sixties owed to the liberal ideals of Cold War America, a democratic vision that still underlies our hopes for digital media today.”

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2013
ISBN 9780226325897, 022632589X
365 pages

Reviews: Jathan Sadowski (LA Review of Books, 2014), Carolyn L Kane (J Visual Culture, 2015), Matthew Linton (Society For U.S. Intellectual History Blog, 2015), Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan (Technology & Culture, 2015), Craig J. Pearison (J American History, 2016), Katie Simpson (J-History, 2017), Malte Hagener (NECSUS, 2015), Erika J. Pribanic-Smith (Journalism History, 2014), Debra Cash (ArtsFuse, 2014), Alex Sayf Cummings (2014).
Interview with author (Henry Jenkins, 2014), (cont.)
Interview with author (Clay Shirky, Public Books, 2014)
Video lecture (Berkeley, 2014)

Author
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF

Andreas Huyssen: After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (1986)

Huyssen argues that postmodernism cannot be regarded as a radical break with the past, as it is deeply indebted to that other trend within the culture of modernity—the historical avant-garde.

Publisher Indiana University Press, 1986
Theories of representation and difference
ISBN 0253203996, 9780253203991
244 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (no OCR; updated on 2012-7-18)

Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everyday Life, 2 vols. (1980–) [EN, PT, ES, CR]

Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology–to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

This social history of “making do” is based on microhistories that move from the private sphere (of dwelling, cooking, and homemaking) to the public (the experience of living in a neighborhood). The second volume of this magnum opus delves even deeper than did the first into the subtle tactics of resistance and private practices that make living a subversive art.

French edition
L’invention du quotidien, I, arts de faire, Gallimard, 1980
L’invention du quotidien, II, habiter, cuisiner, Gallimard, 1994

English edition
Translated by Steven Rendall
Publisher University of California Press, 1984
ISBN 0520236998, 9780520236998
229 pages

English edition, Volume 2: Living & Cooking
With Luce Giard and Pierre Mayol
Translated by Timothy J. Tomasik
University of Minnesota Press, 1998
ISBN 0816628777, 9780816628773
292 pages

Wikipedia (EN)
Publisher (EN, Vol. 1)
Publisher (EN, Vol. 2)
Google books (EN, Vol. 1)

The Practice of Everyday Life (English, trans. Steven Rendall, 1984, updated on 2013-9-28)
The Practice of Everyday Life, Vol. 2: Living and Cooking (English, trans. Timothy J. Tomasik, 1998, added on 2013-9-28)
A invenção do cotidiano (Portuguese, trans. Ephraim Ferreira Alves, Third edition, 1998, added on 2013-9-28)
La invención de lo cotidiano. 1 Artes de hacer (Spanish, trans. Alejandro Pescador, 2000, added on 2013-9-28)
La invención de lo cotidiano. 2 Habitar, cocinar (Spanish, trans. Alejandro Pescador, 1999, added on 2013-9-28)
Invencija svakodnevnice (Croatian, trans. Gordana Popovic, 2002, added on 2013-9-28)