And he poses this retroactive mode of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is so pervasive today. If "The Return of the Real" begins with a narrative of the historical avant-garde, it concludes with a reading of our contemporary situation - and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.

From the Back Cover
'As the twentieth century lurches to its end, the rhetoric of 'post' has been increasingly supplanted by an awareness of uncanny repetition. No one has more skillfully mapped the resulting spatial displacements and temporal heterogeneities than Hal Foster. Lively and accessible in style, theoretically astute and politically engaged, The Return of the Real is a model of cultural criticism at its most incisive.' Martin Jay, Professor, Dept. of History, University of California, Berkley

'Hal Foster's essays have time and again defined the point where theoretical imagination converges with urgent questions in the practice of art, and he offers a guiding intelligence for anyone who wants to know why contemporary art matters in the wider debates about the shape and direction of American culture.' Thomas Crow, Robert Lehman Professor of the History of Art, Yale University

'The compelling analyses in The Return of the Real make clear that Hal Foster is one of the few contemporary critics who consistently asks and thinks through the most probing questions about the turbulent intersection of late twentieth-century art, cultural theory, and global capitalism, and who keenly knows that the answers to them can never be reassuring or fashionable affirmations but rather new and disquieting questions.' Jonathan Crary, Columbia University