Retroactive Justice : Prehistory of Post-Communism / István Rév.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rév, István, Author.

Series:

Cultural Memory in the Present

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (360 p.) : 29 illustrations

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This unorthodox scholarly work dissects the ghosts of history in order to analyze how the past—both recent and distant—haunts posterity, and in what ways the present disfigures the image of times gone by. The book presents a novel history of Communism from the perspective of its collapse, and inspects the world beyond the Fall in the distorting mirror of its imagined prehistory. Using a series of strange and darkly ironic stories, the subsequent chapters provide a close exploration of some of the essential objects of historical study: the name, the date, the dead, the relic, the pantheon, the court, the underworld, and the underground. The tension between vast distances, both in space and time, that Retroactive Justice covers, and the extremely focused analyses, provide an unexpected experience of writing and rewriting, visioning and revisioning history.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1. Parallel Autopsies

2. The Necronym

3. A Pantheon

4. Holy Days

5. A Rule of Law

6. Underground

7. Transition

Index

Cultural Memory in the Present

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)

ISBN:

1-5036-1821-8

OCLC:

1294423167