The Promise of Nostalgia: Reminiscence, Longing and Hope in Contemporary American Culture (Routledge Research in Anticipation and Futures)

The Promise of Nostalgia analyses a range of texts - including The Virgin Suicides, both the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides' and Sofia Coppola's screen adaptation, photography of Detroit's 'abandoned spaces', and blogger Tavi Gevinson's media output - to explore nostalgia as a prominent affect in contemporary American cultural production. Counter to the prevalent caricature of nostalgia as anti-future, the book proposes a more nuanced reading of its stakes and meanings. Instead of understanding it as evidence of the absence of utopia it contends that there is a masked utopian impulse in this nostalgia 'mode' and critical potential in what has typically been dismissed as ideological. This book will be of interest to scholars, graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students interested in contemporary culture, cultural theory, media studies, the Frankfurt School, utopian studies and American literature and culture.

• | Author: Nicola Sayers
• | Publisher: Routledge
• | Publication Date: January 16, 2020
• | Number of Pages: 226 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0367134985
• | ISBN-13: 9780367134983