Nostalgia and pastiche in the post-postmodern zeitgeist: The ‘postcar’ from Italy

Abstract

The transition towards a post-postmodern zeitgeist has attracted much scholarly attention over the last decade, highlighting the major traits of the coming post-postmodern condition, such as sincerity challenging irony, reconstruction despite paradoxes, hope despite difficult circumstances and structure counterbalancing anti-structure in lived experience. Nevertheless, we know little about what is happening with regard to nostalgia, a key characteristic of postmodernity, especially in terms of one of its major components, pastiche. From the start of the 1990s, marketing research on postmodern nostalgia and pastiche has largely focused on different models of cars. Through an interpretive analysis focusing on the dual comeback of an Italian car, the Giulia, this article aims to investigate the existence and forms that nostalgia and pastiche take under the new zeitgeist. It highlights a mutation of nostalgia that is becoming regenerative. The major consequence of this is the changing nature of pastiche, from stylistic to essentialist. Our understanding of the coming zeitgeist has also improved: in addition to confirming the major features of post-postmodernity already established in the literature, this study argues that the possibility of a (mini)miracle is another key feature of our times.

Brand repulsion: consumers’ boundary work with rejected brands

“…This approach makes it possible to interpret the phenomenon of consumer collectives declaring repulsion for a brand. The end-result highlights three different types of boundary work undertaken by consumers, anti-fandom, anti-hegemony and anti-marketing identity work, which reflect the current zeitgeist (Cantone et al , 2020).…”

Post-postmodern consumer authenticity, shantay you stay or sashay away? A netnography of RuPaul’s Drag Race fans

“…As such, the purported artwork parodies the signalling by more involved fans of their knowledge and talent. Suggested is a postmodern stylistic pastiche in response to post-postmodern essentialist ones (as per Cantone et al, 2020). Subsequent comments suggest other underrated moments the artist could draw (which are in fact similarly iconic events from Drag Race history), sarcastically praise the artistry, ‘This is beautiful, do you mind if I get it tattooed?’, or jokingly accuse the artist of passing off the work as their own, ‘Fake.…”

“…Moving beyond the pioneering big picture of the shift towards the post-postmodern, is what Cantone et al (2020) describe as the task of developing a better understanding of the post-postmodern zeitgeist and to envision how consumer culture has or could change as a result. Exploring authenticity negotiation is another means of renewed conceptualisation of consumption in light of post-postmodernism.…”

What’s the story, allegory?

“…Termed allegory's "vertical" and "horizontal" dimensions respectively, the former offers deeper insights, the latter better reading experiences. 10 Although both are evident in CCT's compendious corpus, it's fair to say that the easy reading of early interpretive articlessuch as Stern's studies of allegoryis giving way to the perplexities of post-postmodern prognostication (Cantone, Cova, and Testa 2020). When reviewers insist on "deeper" insights, thereby emphasising the vertical over the horizontal, a price is paid in popular appeal, researchers' ability to reach out to wider readerships.…”