Present Pasts

By Andreas Huyssen,

Book cover of Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory

Book description

Memory of historical trauma has a unique power to generate works of art. This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York-three late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas. Berlin experienced the fall of the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Present Pasts as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andreas Huyssen is the author of many distinguished books, but this one is especially important because it expanded the study of public memory to South America, which has had its own share of traumatic pasts to memorialize. Huyssen argues that World War II and the Holocaust have provided  “templates” for memorialization that have been adapted by the Memory Park in Buenos Aires, among other examples. 

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