Ethics and Nostalgia in the Contemporary Novel

Abstract

Images of loss and yearning played a crucial role in literary texts written in the later part of the twentieth century. Despite deep cultural differences, novelists from Africa, the Caribbean, Great Britain, and the United States share a sense that the economic, social, and political forces associated with late modernity have evoked widespread nostalgia within the communities in which they write. In this original and wide-ranging study, John J. Su explores the relationship between nostalgia and ethics in novels across the English-speaking world. He challenges the tendency in literary studies to characterise memory as positive and nostalgia as necessarily negative. Instead, this book argues that nostalgic fantasies are crucial to the ethical visions presented by topical novels. From Jean Rhys to Wole Soyinka and from V. S. Naipaul to Toni Morrison, Su identifies nostalgia as a central concern in the twentieth-century novel.

Baba’s Death: Nour’s Nostalgic Voice in Zyen Joukhadar’s The Map of Salt and Stars

“…The relationship of the present, past and future is apparent in contemporary novels. Su (2005) in his book affirms that every single author has struggled to the longing in association with the lost or imagined homeland. Therefore, the author's texts represent a 'strand' of contemporary Anglophone literature which increases lately in the century.…”

Why We Hate‐Watch: The Role of Nostalgia and Investment in WWE Viewership

“…Inherent to the human condition, nostalgia has been studied by scholars across a variety of fields: psychology (Wildschut et al.), sociology (Wilson), communication (Lizardi), and English (Su), to name a few. In the late 1600s, nostalgia was viewed as a medical condition akin to a type of melancholy related to homesickness (Hofer).…”

Space Nostalgia in The Old Drift: Memorializing Matha Mwamba, the Afronaut

“…Literary scholars like Johanson (2016) and Su (2005) have argued that the concept of nostalgia can be used productively, when nostalgic projects are read as exploring how the present has come up short and as inspiration for the future. In the following chapters of The Old Drift, Serpell imagines Matha's life after leaving the space program, living as a squatter in the Kalingalinga district of Lusaka with her daughter and then grandson.…”