ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 presents this book’s original theoretical approach, outlining a more promising ‘third way’ in which nostalgia is neither antithetical to a future-oriented utopian drive, nor a source of backward-looking utopian longing. It draws on Ernst Bloch’s critical approach to culture in general, as well as his ideas about non-contemporaneity, to suggest that nostalgic longing can contain seeds of unfinished utopian potential; and suggests that Bloch might provide us with a way of looking at contemporary nostalgia culture which is more nuanced and indeed more hopeful than prominent critics have allowed. The core Blochian ideas are supplemented with comparative reflections on key concepts from Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse, intended to enrich the central argument and highlight particular issues and possibilities.
