Full Description
Celebrating art and interpretation that take on social challenges, Doris Sommer steers the humanities back to engagement with the world. The reformist projects that focus her attention develop momentum and meaning as they circulate through society to inspire faith in the possible. Among the cases that she covers are top-down initiatives of political leaders, such as those launched by Antanas Mockus, former mayor of BogotÁ, Colombia, and also bottom-up movements like the Theatre of the Oppressed created by the Brazilian director, writer, and educator Augusto Boal. Alleging that we are all cultural agents, Sommer also takes herself to task and creates Pre-Texts, an international arts-literacy project that translates high literary theory through popular creative practices. The Work of Art in the World is informed by many writers and theorists. Foremost among them is the eighteenth-century German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, who remains an eloquent defender of art-making and humanistic interpretation in the construction of political freedom. Schiller's thinking runs throughout Sommer's modern-day call for citizens to collaborate in the endless co-creation of a more just and more beautiful world.
Contents
Acknowledgments xv
Prologue. Welcome Back 1
1. From the Top: Government-Sponsored Creativity 15
2. Press Here: Cultural Acupuncture and Civic Stimulation 49
3. Art and Accountability 81
4. Pre-Texts: The Arts Interpret 107
5. Play Drive in the Hard Drive: Schiller's Poetics of Politics 135
Notes 157
Bibliography 193
Index 215
