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Deniz Utlu: On Behalf of Grief and Anger. Against an Economy of Remembrance
On Behalf of Grief and Anger. Against an Economy of Remembrance
(p. 237 – 256)

Deniz Utlu

On Behalf of Grief and Anger. Against an Economy of Remembrance

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  • artistic practice
  • contemporary art
  • resistance
  • protest movements

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Deniz Utlu

Deniz Utlu is a novelist and essayist living in Berlin, where he also curates the literary series Prosa der Verhältnisse (present conditional prose—a reading series) for the Maxim Gorki Theater and conducts research on human rights. His first novel, Die Ungehaltenen, was published by Graf Verlag in 2014 and his second novel, Gegen Morgen, in 2019 by Suhrkamp Verlag. Most recently, he received the Alfred Döblin Prize 2021 for the manuscript of his forthcoming third novel Ursprung. www.denizutlu.de
Sebastián  Eduardo Dávila (ed.), Rebecca Hanna John (ed.), ...: On Withdrawal—Scenes of Refusal, Disappearance, and Resilience in Art and Cultural Practices

What forms does withdrawal—meaning either that which withdraws itself or which is being withdrawn—take in artistic and cultural practices? What movement(s) does it create or follow in specific contexts, and with what theoretical, material, and political consequences? The contributors of this book address these questions in a variety of writing practices, each focusing on specific scenes. These scenes are organized under three parts that structure the chapters: Passivity, Failure, and Refusal; Disappearance and Remembrance; Resilience and Resistance. Through interviews, artistic and literary texts, visual contributions, and academic texts, the authors explore various modalities of withdrawal ranging from a silencing of critical voices to a political and aesthetic strategy of refusal. The enforced disappearance of government opponents, for instance, may be implemented as a means of state violence, but withdrawing may also mean the decision not to participate in such violence, either through forms of passivity or refusal. Moreover, in the neoliberal logic of resilience, the relationship between subjective agency and imposition from the outside remains tense. The aim of this book is to tackle these tensions, as well as the ambiguities and complexities of withdrawal.

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