Automatic for the Masses : The Death of the Author and the Birth of Socialist...

by Petrov, Petre M

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Automatic for the Masses : The Death of the Author and the Birth of Socialist Realism, Paperback by Petrov, Petre M., ISBN 1487540418, ISBN-13 9781487540418, Like New Used, Free shipping in the US At the end of the 1920s, the Modernist and avant-garde artistic programmes of the early Soviet Union were swept away by the rise of Stalinism and the dictates of Socialist Realism. Did this aesthetic transition also constitute a conceptual break, or were there unseen continuities between these two movements? In Automatic for the Masses, Petre M. Petrov offers a novel, theoretically informed account of that transition, tracing those connections through Modernist notions of agency and authorship. Reading the statements and manifestos of the Formalists, Constructivists, and other Soviet avant-garde artists, Petrov argues that Socialist Realism perpetuated in a new form the Modernist &;death of the author.&; In interpreting this symbolic demise, he shows how the official culture of the 1930s can be seen as a perverted realization of modernism&;s unrealizable project. An insightful and challenging interpretation of the era, Automatic for the Masses will be required reading for those interested in understanding early Soviet culture.

• ISBN: 9781487540418
• Condition: Fine

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