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Social Science General

Guerrilla Aesthetics

Art, Memory, and the West German Urban Guerrilla

by (author) Kimberly Mair

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
May 2016
Category
General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773546943
    Publish Date
    May 2016
    List Price
    $115.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773546950
    Publish Date
    May 2016
    List Price
    $37.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773598751
    Publish Date
    May 2016
    List Price
    $110.00

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Description

The violent operations performed in the 1970s by West German urban guerrillas – such as the Red Army Faction (RAF) – were so vivid and incomprehensible that it seemed to be more urgent to produce spectacle than to be politically successful. In Guerrilla Aesthetics, Kimberly Mair challenges the assumption that these guerrillas sought to realize specific political goals. Instead, she tracks the guerrilla fighters’ plunge into an avant-garde-inspired negativity that rejected rationality and provoked the state.

Focusing on the Red Decade of 1967 to 1977, which was characterized not only by terrorism and police brutality but also by counterculture aesthetics, Mair draws from archives, grey literatures, popular culture, art, and memorial and curatorial practices to explore the sensorial aspects of guerrilla communications performed by the RAF, as well as the 2nd of June Movement and the Socialist Patients' Collective. Turning to cultural and artistic responses to the decade and its legacy of raw public feelings, Mair also examines works by Eleanor Antin, Erin Cosgrove, Christoph Draeger, Bruce LaBruce, Gerhard Richter, and others.

Reconsidering an enigmatic period in the history of terrorism, Guerrilla Aesthetics innovatively engages with the inherent connections between violence, performance, the senses, and memory.

About the author

Kimberly Mair is assistant professor of sociology and co-director of the Centre for Culture and Community at the University of Lethbridge.

Kimberly Mair's profile page