Retroactive Justice: Prehistory of Post-Communism

This unorthodox scholarly work dissects the ghosts of history in order to analyze how the past--both recent and distant--haunts posterity, and in what ways the present disfigures the image of times gone by. The book presents a novel history of Communism from the perspective of its collapse, and inspects the world beyond the Fall in the distorting mirror of its imagined prehistory. Using a series of strange and darkly ironic stories, the subsequent chapters provide a close exploration of some of the essential objects of historical study: the name, the date, the dead, the relic, the pantheon, the court, the underworld, and the underground. The tension between vast distances, both in space and time, that Retroactive Justice covers, and the extremely focused analyses, provide an unexpected experience of writing and rewriting, visioning and revisioning history.

Author: István Rév
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 01/18/2005
Pages: 360
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.04h x 6.12w x 0.46d
ISBN: 9780804736442

About the Author
Istvan Rév is Professor of History and Political Science, and Academic Director of the Open Society Archives at the Central European University in Budapest.