Suzana Milevska Bücher

On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency prompts a cross-disciplinary inquiry into the productive potential of shame. It challenges traditional views of shame as merely linked to personal trauma, lack, and loss, instead addressing complex issues related to confronting a grim colonial and imperial past, as initially proposed by Paul Gilroy. The book explores how to navigate personal and collective memories of "paralyzing guilt" following atrocities and genocides, and how these negative experiences can be transformed into "productive shame" for both perpetrators and victims. This collection features essays, discussions, and interviews that examine the intersections of history, materiality, and culturally constructed concepts of race, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Romaism, and queer shame across various disciplines, including philosophy, art, visual culture, and gender studies. It analyzes case studies and artistic projects that utilize collaborative research methods to empower the transformation of shame into agency. Ultimately, the role of productive shame is framed as a means to prevent the recurrence of institutional structures and events that perpetuate racism, contextualized within current debates on political responsibility and reconciliation in Europe and Africa.

Reinigungsgesellschaft stands for an art practice in the field of social dialogue. It works with partners from a range of backgrounds and represents a platform for interdisciplinary activities. Contemporary art serves as a catalyst for social and political processes. The introductory manifesto outlines the most important slogans, thematic focal points and areas of operation for Reinigungsgesellschaft's work. Based on the numerous projects documented in the book, what the Reinigungsgesellschaft means by this proclaimed, cognitive conception of art in practice is: Art serves understanding and an element of learning. The second volume contains additional projects and a text by Suzana Milevska on the standpoint of art within society.