Revolts in Cultural Critique
Prof. Rosemarie Buikema’s new monograph Revolts in Cultural Critique has been released as part of the New Critical Humanities series, published by Rowman & Littlefield and edited by Birgit Kaiser, Timothy O’Leary, and Kathrin Thiele.
Art as cultural critique
This book is centered around the relationship between art and political transformation. From Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf, to Marlene van Niekerk and William Kentridge, artists and intellectuals have tried to address the question: How to deal with the legacy of exclusion and oppression? Via substantive works of art, this book examines some of the answers that have emerged to this question, to show how art can put into motion something new and how it can transform social and cultural relations in a sustainable way. In this way, art can function as an effective form of cultural critique.
Reviews
"Rosemarie Buikema’s Revolts in Cultural Critique recharges hope in troubled times. The book explores in bold and innovative ways how cultural forms themselves can embody and unlock the forces of resistance. A series of vivid readings ranging from Woolf and Couperus to Kentridge and #RhodesMustFall, demonstrate that politics conjoined with critique can set change in motion. This is a crucial, innovative and often moving account of the necessity of the arts, theatre, and writing for political renewal—more so now than ever."
- Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford
"With characteristic brilliance, Rosemarie Buikema raises one of the most fundamental questions of our time: What to do with “old stuff”? That is, through what methods, means, and measures can humanity transition away from the violence of coloniality to just and equitable relations. A book about a political "not yet here" that has nevertheless already materialized in practices of imagination, Revolts in Cultural Critique offers a deeply compelling treatment of the capacity of form to work through complex and haunting pasts."
- Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Columbia University Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race Founding curator, Latino Arts and Activism Archives
- Title: Revolts in Cultural Critique
- Author: Rosemarie Buikema
- Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
- ISBN: 978-1-78661-402-5