Unleashing the Collective Phantoms Essays in Reverse Imagineering

These insurgent essays describe, prolong and critique some of the cultural and artistic projects that arose with the worldwide wave of protests around the turn of the millennium, against what the global South calls neoliberalism. Dissent and the refusal of a programmed existence continually return to the streets; but they also unfold in the imagination. Complex discourses and elaborate fictions weave their way through images, gestures and hilarious scenarios, hovering at the edges of reality and searching for whoever will give them voice. Museums, cinemas, books and theaters are temporary abodes for such things, and authors are only a convenience. But none of the wilder spirits ever really disappears. Time leaches away the graffiti of revolt, and the cynicism of power lays a new coat of paint. Still the collective phantoms return.