ABSTRACT
In ‘Feminist fiction and the uses of memory’ (1991), in an argument that many of us will find intuitively convincing, Gayle Greene suggests that an opposition may be constructed between a liberating and progressive ‘feminist’ memory, on the one hand, and a reactionary and regressive nostalgia on the other. Feminist
memory, Greene argues, works to open up, confront, and challenge the voices and institutions of the past, and is therefore central to the projects of the women’s movement: nostalgia, which always looks backwards in search of authentic origins and stable meanings, is directly obstructive to these projects. What makes Greene’s essay particularly intriguing, then, is that it is itself less an example of the use of critical, playful feminist memory, than it is an example of the use of nostalgia.
