Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Radical Unpresent: Cultural Resistance in a Fractured World

The Radical Unpresent: Cultural Resistance in a Fractured World

Sholette, Gregory

Paperback

Art HistoryGeneral Art

Publisher Price: $34.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date October 20, 2026

ISBN10: 0262054116
ISBN13: 9780262054119
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: Oct 20 2026
Pages: 352
Language: English
A necessary and timely exploration of art activism today, informed by centuries of protest.

How contemporary artists and activists are navigating and resisting the collapse of historical time in our uncanny present.

The Radical Unpresent examines our disorienting contemporary moment, in which our experience of time has become profoundly disrupted. Building on his earlier work on dark matter in the art world, Gregory Sholette introduces the concept of the unpresent--a condition in which everything appears the same yet is completely transformed, lacking both a past and a future.

The book traces the emergence of this uncanny temporal state through Brexit, Trump's first election, and the COVID pandemic, culminating in the January 6th insurrection and the rise of MAGA 2.0 in 2025. Sholette analyzes how this temporal crisis manifests in both progressive and reactionary cultural responses, arguing that MAGA represents not simply regression but also a new kind of retro-vanguard that seeks to escape the unpresent by restoring an imagined past.

Never one to be content with the status quo, Sholette reveals the inner workings of a phantom archive--a surplus repository of activist practices, unrealized possibilities, and spectral histories that artists access through repair, repurposing, and reenactment. Through examples ranging from Dread Scott's slave rebellion reenactment to contemporary Belarus protest art, he demonstrates how artists are creating temporal interventions that acknowledge historical wounds while opening pathways to alternative futures.

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