Red Atlantis

For most of the twentieth century, American and European intellectual life was defined by its fascination with a particular utopian vision. Both the artistic and political vanguards were spellbound by the Communist promise of a new human era so much so that its political terrors were rationalized as a form of applied evolution and its collapse hailed as the end of history. "The Red Atlantis" argues that Communism produced a complex culture with a dialectical relation to both modernism and itself. Offering examples ranging from the Stalinist show trial to Franz Kafka's posthumous career as a dissident writer and the work of filmmakers, painters, and writers, which can be understood only as criticism of existing socialism made from within, "The Red Atlantis" suggests that Communism was an aesthetic project perhaps the aesthetic project of the twentieth century.Author note: J. Hoberman, staff writer for the Village Voice, writes on film and culture for the "Voice", the "Voice Literary Supplement", "Artforum", and other publications. His books include "Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds" (Temple, 1995) and "Vulgar Modernism: Writing on Movies and Other Media" (Temple, 1991), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism. He is an Adjunct Professor of Cinema at the Cooper Union.