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Socialism is one of the main global paradigms that shaped the 20th century. While it is characterized by a transcultural, universalizing utopia, socialism has actually manifested itself in a large variety of local concepts that modify, alter, adapt and localize its universalisms in time and space (e.g., Soviet-style communism, Western socialist movements, African socialism or its North Korean and Chinese versions). Socialism as an idea has been spread all over the world, regardless of whether a given society has defined itself as socialist or not, whether it was a real life experiment in society or a cultural counter-concept to local or transnational power structures (such as imperialism and colonialism).

The book explores, on the one hand, a) both (aesthetic) manifestations of and (discursive) contradictions within the socialist paradigm in case studies on the former East Bloc and the Global South, mostly Africa, and b) the ways these manifestations became entangled on aesthetic, material, and personal levels. On the other hand, neither the East Bloc, nor Africa formed exclusive bilateral relationships, but were also part of the global world's networks. The Black Atlantic includes, of course, the U.S., the Global South does not limit itself to the African continent, but extends to India, for instance. Thus new perspectives on the entanglements between different edges of the antagonistic Cold War world become evident.