Remembering 1989

“Arguing decisively against the Western triumphalism that dominated the story of 1989 after the Cold War, Pinkert offers a compelling account of how counternarratives survive at the margins. Through well-chosen empirical cases and sophisticated aesthetic analysis, Pinkert provides a new theorization of how archives intersect with cultural memory. In so doing, she invites us to rethink political possibility in moments of uncertainty, danger, and crisis.” * Jonathan Bach, The New School * “Remembering 1989 is a landmark achievement. Pinkert’s recovery of the traces of revolution, and her teasing out of connections with more recent moments of social protest from Occupy and the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter, will also help direct the field of memory studies toward examining as-yet-unrealized, alternative futures, which are urgently needed in this moment of global democratic decline and authoritarian resurgence.” * Katrin Sieg, Georgetown University * “Remembering 1989 is a sustained probing of the mechanisms of history and memory, showing through careful analysis how these shards of memory continue to affect the present and the future. Pinkert writes with vividness and clarity as she turns her critical eye to public spaces, memorials, art installations, photography, and films that open up a critique of the dominant notion that the socialist revolution failed and then vanished without a trace.” * Leslie Morris, University of Minnesota *