John Frederick Bailyn

The Future of (Post)Socialism: Eastern European Perspectives - SUNY series, Pangaea II: Global / Local Studies John Frederick Bailyn

If socialism did not end as abruptly as is sometimes perceived, what remnants of it linger today and will continue to linger? Moreover, if postsocialism is an umbrella term for the uncertain times of various transitions that followed in socialism's wake, how might the "post" be rendered complicated by the notion that the unfinished business of socialism continues to influence the trajectory of the future? The Future of (Post) Socialism examines this unfinished business through various disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches that seek to illuminate the postsocialist future as a cultural and social fact. Drawn from the fields of history, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, education, linguistics, literature, and cultural studies, contributors analyze various cultural forms and practices of the formerly socialist cultural spaces of Eastern Europe. In so doing, they question the teleology of linear transitional narratives and of assumptions about postsocialist linear progress, concluding that things operate more as continued interruptions of a perpetually liminal state rather than as neat endings and new beginnings.