Sommer, Doris. The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014)

Abstract

Doris Sommer's Book The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities must be received as vivid recollections of anecdotal and yielding civic interventions. Most of these celebrated creative social interventions relate either to confident "high-ranking" political leaders or weird grassroots artists in some particular socioeconomic contexts already in paralysis.no doubt, such models of civic initiatives cannot be transposed to other communities; therefore, it is easy to reject Sommer's propositions as over-optimistic and operationally inapplicable. It is also acceptable here to restate the reactions of the Duke Press editors who told Doris Sommer right at the onset that this book "is too much theory" and "no one wants to read theory".1