Overview

Is culture a luxury? In this era of austerity, the value of the arts has been a topic of heated debate in Greece, where the country’s economic troubles have led to drastic cuts in public funding and much contention over the significance of cultural institutions and government-funded arts initiatives. At issue in these debates are larger questions regarding the very notions of publicness, hierarchies of value, and functions of the state that structure collective life. Beginning with the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, How to Be Public tracks this turbulence as it unfolded in the Greek film world in the early years of the crisis. Investigating the different forms of citizenship and collectivity being negotiated in cinema’s social spaces, this book considers how the arts and cultural production may illuminate the changing conditions of, and possibilities for, public and collective life in the neoliberal era.

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9780520379015

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The value of Lee's book lies in her conceptualization of an agonistic public life in which the arts, including cinema, act as catalysts for a dissenting collectivity, and in the hope she offers for possibilities of resistance despite the ongoing expansion of economic logic into all aspects of life. * Journal of Modern Greek Studies *

Author Information

Toby Lee is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. 

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