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.
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