Book review of Stefan Szczelkun’s Silence!

I have a review of Stefan Szczelkun’s book Silence in the latest Journal of Art and the Public Sphere. Link to review is here

“‘Silence!’ is the poignant term that is the title of, and sets the tone for, Stefan Szczelkun’s book Silence!. The silence exclaimed by Szczelkun is accompanied by a call to pierce this; for an expression of working-class life that cultural oppression has silenced to be heard. Szczelkun explicitly states in his opening pages the hypothesis of his book, an exploration of some of the mechanisms of repression of working-class culture, and how we might ‘kick back’ against the class oppression we suffer as culture is imposed from ‘above’. It is with understanding and awareness of this oppression and through ‘cultural play’ that we might be re-empowered to live a richer cultural life.”