In Another World: Notes 2014-2017

Description

Blending memoir and social critique, elegantly written essays explore a world that feels different, from Brexit and Trump to #MeToo and the death of parents.This book merges memoir and social critique in an original fashion. By combining personal observations with a general systemic analysis, it seeks to propose a new genre of writing. Isabelle Graw manages to capture radical political, social, and cultural changes that have occurred since 2014 in elegantly written observations, also analyzing how these macro-shifts reach into her own life. Addressing topics that range from Brexit, Trump, and a general rightward turn to #MeToo, men with beards, and Balenciaga, Gaw registers the symptoms of a world that clearly feels different. Meditating on irretrievable personal losses, she describes how we find ourselves literally "in another world" after the death of our parents. With a theme of mourning running throughout, her book is an attempt at exposing and analyzing painful emotions.

Isabelle Graw (Frankfurt am Main/Berlin) is Professor of Art Theory and Art History at the Staatliche Hochschule f r bildende K nste-St delschule, Frankfurt am Main. In 1990 Graw and Stefan Germer founded the quarterly magazine Texte zur Kunst. In 2003, Graw and Daniel Birnbaum founded the Institut f r Kunstkritik at the St delschule.

"Since Walter Benjamin, we have come to view the fragment as an eminently modern form of writing. Isabelle Graw's In Another World shows us why. In crisp and striking vignettes, this book shows how self-scrutiny and minute observation of the world intermesh and form the dense web of her analysis. This is a unique and original book, literary, psychological, and sociological all at once." -Eva Illouz, author of The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations "Writing in the aftermath of her parents' deaths, Isabelle Graw examines aspects of her daily life with the same deft intelligence that she's brought to her studies of visual art and critical theory. These 'notes' find Graw in midlife, an urban professional with a partner, an ex-husband, and a child, attempting to navigate a course between social obligations, inner voice, and creative necessity. Blindingly frank, she addresses the questions that envelop her days: work life, the arrival of refugees in Germany, art exhibitions and grief, electoral and family politics. In Another World is both a literary work and a philosophical experiment. Subtly, Graw reveals how impressions and beliefs arise out of circumstance." -Chris Kraus, author of Summer of Hate and Social Practices