ABSTRACT
A recurring theme in the study of avant-gardes is their tendency to fail, either because popular culture never reaches the territory that the avant-garde has charted, or because institutionally supported elites absorb the avant-garde's formal innovations while evacuating them of anything socially subversive. It is therefore rather poignant when an actor in the Civilians' Paris Commune, an American documentary musical about the rise and bloody suppression of the Commune of 1871, announces "This is not a story about failure." Paris Commune serves as a reminder that even if to be of the avant-garde is always to be untimely–to miss the opportunity for revolution either by arriving at the new too soon or recognizing it too late–an avant-garde's utopian energies can survive in the face of historical neglect through art's address to the future. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book.
