Davies, JGH (2010) Sustainable Nostalgia. Memory Studies, 3 (3). 262 - 268 (7). ISSN 1750-6980
Abstract
The ecological ideal of ‘sustainability’ is defensible, but controversial. It valorizes a certain way of inhabiting the world not by defining it directly, but by imagining its perpetual reproduction. I argue that what sustainability offers us is a way of being nostalgic for the future.The sustainable present will become our true home because it is the point to which the future will always recur; we look nostalgically to the future because it is there that the present will be inhabited as our home. Nostalgic imaginings are not, then, just a regulative ideal for ecological praxis. Nostalgia is called upon as an ethical principle, and the characteristics of this memory-work will affect the shape of our future.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2010, Sage Publications. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Memory Studies. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | ecocriticism; intergenerational justice; sustainability |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of English (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Jul 2013 12:44 |
Last Modified: | 15 Sep 2014 03:18 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1750698010364819 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Sage Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/1750698010364819 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:75939 |