The Ministry of Nostalgia

The Ministry of Nostalgia PDF Author: Owen Hatherley
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1784780766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Why should we have to “Keep Calm and Carry On”? In this brilliant polemical rampage, Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a “make do and mend” aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition. The Ministry of Nostalgia explodes the creation of a false history: a rewriting of the austerity of the 1940s and 1950s, which saw the development of a welfare state while the nation crawled out of the devastations of war. This period has been recast to explain and offer consolation for the violence of neoliberalism, an ideology dedicated to the privatisation of our common wealth. In coruscating prose—with subjects ranging from Ken Loach’s documentaries, Turner Prize–shortlisted video art, London vernacular architecture, and Jamie Oliver’s cooking—Hatherley issues a passionate challenge to the injunction to keep calm and carry on.

The Ministry of Nostalgia

The Ministry of Nostalgia PDF Author: Owen Hatherley
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784780774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
In this brilliant polemical rampage, Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a "make do and mend" aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition. The Ministry of Nostalgia explodes the creation of a false history: a rewriting of the austerity of the 1940s and 1950s, which saw the development of a welfare state while the nation crawled out of the devastations of war. This period has been recast to explain and offer consolation for the violence of neoliberalism, an ideology dedicated to the privatisation of our common wealth. In coruscating prose-with subjects ranging from Ken Loach's documentaries, Turner Prize-shortlisted video art, London vernacular architecture, and Jamie Oliver's cooking-Hatherley issues a passionate challenge to the injunction to keep calm and carry on.

The Ministry of Nostalgia

The Ministry of Nostalgia PDF Author: Owen Hatherley
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784780782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Why should we have to “Keep Calm and Carry On”? In this brilliant polemical rampage, Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a “make do and mend” aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition. The Ministry of Nostalgia explodes the creation of a false history: a rewriting of the austerity of the 1940s and 1950s, which saw the development of a welfare state while the nation crawled out of the devastations of war. This period has been recast to explain and offer consolation for the violence of neoliberalism, an ideology dedicated to the privatisation of our common wealth. In coruscating prose—with subjects ranging from Ken Loach’s documentaries, Turner Prize–shortlisted video art, London vernacular architecture, and Jamie Oliver’s cooking—Hatherley issues a passionate challenge to the injunction to keep calm and carry on.

Red Metropolis

Red Metropolis PDF Author: Owen Hatherley
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1913462218
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
A polemical history of municipal socialism in London - and an argument for turning this capitalist capital red again. A polemical history of municipal socialism in London -- and an argument for turning this capitalist capital red again. London is conventionally seen as merely a combination of the financial centre in the City and the centre of governmental power in Westminster, a uniquely capitalist capital city. This book is about the third London - a social democratic twentieth-century metropolis, a pioneer in council housing, public enterprise, socialist design, radical local democracy and multiculturalism. This book charts the development of this municipal power base under leaders from Herbert Morrison to Ken Livingstone, and its destruction in 1986, leaving a gap which has been only very inadequately filled by the Greater London Authority under Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan. Opposing currently fashionable bullshit about an imaginary "metropolitan elite", this book makes a case for London pride on the left, and makes an argument for using that pride as a weapon against a government of suburban landlords that ruthlessly exploits Londoners.

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay PDF Author: Hooman Majd
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030794669X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
In February 2011, Hooman Majd disembarked at the Tehran airport, a place he had passed through many times to visit family or accompany a news crew. But this time he had his wife, Karri; his infant son, Khash; and an oversize stroller in tow—and plans to stay for a year. Few American journalists gain entry to Iran; for Majd, the son of a diplomat under the shah and the grandson of an ayatollah, it would be the first time he had lived in his homeland since childhood. In The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay, he recounts both his family’s domestic adventures and a tumultuous year in Iranian politics. The result is an unforgettable portrait of an elusive country whose government, in the more than thirty years since its Islamic revolution, has been the United States’ most intractable nemesis.

The Promise of Nostalgia

The Promise of Nostalgia PDF Author: Nicola Sayers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429632517
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Book Description
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.

Militant Modernism

Militant Modernism PDF Author: Owen Hatherley
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1780997353
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
Militant Modernism is a defence against Modernism's many detractors. It looks at design, film and architecture - especially architecture — and pursues the notion of an evolved modernism that simply refuses to stop being necessary. Owen Hatherley gives us new ways to look at what we thought was familiar — Bertolt Brecht, Le Corbusier, even Vladimir Mayakovsky. Through Hatherley's eyes we see all of the quotidian modernists of the 20th century - lesser lights, too — perhaps understanding them for the first time. Whether we are looking at Britain's brutalist aesthetics, Russian Constructivism, or the Sexpol of Wilhelm Reich, the message is clear. There is no alternative to Modernism.

Intimations of Nostalgia

Intimations of Nostalgia PDF Author: Hviid Jacobsen, Michael
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529214785
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
Nostalgia, a complex and multi-layered emotion, has gained interest since the turn of the century in both society and academic circles. Written by an international group of scholars, this volume investigates the relationship between nostalgia and contemporary social issues from a multidisciplinary perspective. From history and political theory to marketing and media, each chapter discusses the way nostalgia has been presented within a disciplinary context and shows how it has evolved over time as a topic of research. Casting light on many recent changes in society and culture, this is an important contribution to the study of nostalgia and emotions.

Screening American Nostalgia

Screening American Nostalgia PDF Author: Susan Flynn
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147664246X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
This book examines American screen culture and its power to create and sustain values. Looking specifically at the ways in which nostalgia colors the visions of American life, essays explore contemporary American ideology as it is created and sustained by the screen. Nostalgia is omnipresent, selling a version of America that arguably never existed. Current socio-cultural challenges are played out onscreen and placed within the historical milieu through a nostalgic lens which is tempered by contemporary conservatism. Essays reveal not only the visual catalog of recognizable motifs but also how these are used to temper the uncertainty of contemporary crises. Media covered spans from 1939's Gone with the Wind, to Stranger Things, The Americans, Twin Peaks, the Fallout franchise and more.

Consumed Nostalgia

Consumed Nostalgia PDF Author: Gary Cross
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539606
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For many of us, modern memory is shaped less by a longing for the social customs and practices of the past or for family heirlooms handed down over generations and more by childhood encounters with ephemeral commercial goods and fleeting media moments in our age of fast capitalism. This phenomenon has given rise to communities of nostalgia whose members remain loyal to the toys, television, and music of their youth. They return to the theme parks and pastimes of their upbringing, hoping to reclaim that feeling of childhood wonder or teenage freedom. Consumed nostalgia took definite shape in the 1970s, spurred by an increase in the turnover of consumer goods, the commercialization of childhood, and the skillful marketing of nostalgia. Gary Cross immerses readers in this fascinating and often delightful history, unpacking the cultural dynamics that turn pop tunes into oldies and childhood toys into valuable commodities. He compares the limited appeal of heritage sites such as Colonial Williamsburg to the perpetually attractive power of a Disney theme park and reveals how consumed nostalgia shapes how we cope with accelerating change. Today nostalgia can be owned, collected, and easily accessed, making it less elusive and often more fun than in the past, but its commercialization has sometimes limited memory and complicated the positive goals of recollection. By unmasking the fascinating, idiosyncratic character of modern nostalgia, Cross helps us better understand the rituals of recall in an age of fast capitalism.