“Where Dreams are Found and Lost”: Springsteen, Nostalgia, and Identity

 

One of modernity’s permanent laments concerns the loss of a better past, the memory of living in a securely circumscribed place, with a sense of stable boundaries and a place-bound culture with its regular flow of time and a core of permanent relations. Perhaps such days have always been a dream rather than a reality, a phantasmagoria of loss generated by modernity itself rather than its prehistory. But the dream does have staying power.

Andreas Huyssen, “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia”