Irony, Montage, Alienation: Aesthetic Tactics and the Political Form of Democracy

Anna Schober discussed her eponymous book Ironie, Montage, Verfremdung. Ästhetische Taktiken und die politische Gestalt der Demokratie (en.: Irony, Montage, Alienation: Aesthetic Tactics and the Political Form of Democracy) which was published by the Wilhelm Fink Verlag in Munich.

“The book outlines the ‘discovery’ of a tradition of the avant-garde through various historical and regional settings of modernism and postmodernism. The emphasis is on examples from the twentieth century: attention is given to Berlin Dada around 1920, movements such as the European Expanded Cinema and the Brazilian New Objectivity of the 1960s, neo-avant-garde practices since 1989 in the former Eastern Bloc countries and the contemporary anti-globalization movement.

The book consists of interdisciplinary traditional history from the French Revolution onwards and individual case studies shown on a larger scale. In this way, it presents a critical genealogy of the politically-provocative tactics of irony, montage and alienation. Unlike the accepted perspectives from cultural studies, for which such tactics connote a politically ‘subversive’ or ‘transgressive’ effect, the presented method of reading shows how aesthetic engagement is involved in debates on changing society in constantly surprising and conflicting ways. Thus the investigation aims to overcome ossified ways of judging and gain an altered perspective on continuity and innovation concerning the political use of irony, montage and alienation.”
Anna Schober

Anna Schober: Ironie, Montage, Verfremdung. Ästhetische Taktiken und die politische Gestalt der Demokratie.
(en.: Irony, Montage, Alienation: Aesthetic Tactics and the Political Form of Democracy)
Publisher: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 2008
403 pages, German
ISBN 978-3770547050