There Is No Time Like the Past Retro Between Memory and Materiality in Contemporary Culture Handberg, Kristian

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There Is No Time Like the Past Retro Between Memory and Materiality in Contemporary Culture Handberg, Kristian There is no time like the past Retro between memory and materiality in contemporary culture Handberg, Kristian Publication date: 2014 Document version Early version, also known as pre-print Citation for published version (APA): Handberg, K. (2014). There is no time like the past: Retro between memory and materiality in contemporary culture. Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet. Download date: 26. Sep. 2021 FACULTY OF HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN PhD thesis Kristian Handberg There’s no time like the past Retro between memory and materiality in contemporary culture Academic advisor: Mette Sandbye Submitted: 09/05/2014 Institutnavn: Institut for Kunst og Kulturvidenskab Name of department: Department of Arts and Cultural Studies Author: Kristian Handberg Titel og evt. undertitel: There´s no time like the past Title / Subtitle: Retro between memory and materiality in contemporary culture Subject description: A study of retro in contemporary culture as cultural memory through analyses of site-specific contexts of Montreal and Berlin. Academic advisor: Mette Sandbye, lektor, Institut for Kunst og Kulturvidenskab, Københavns Universitet. Co-advisor: Will Straw, Professor, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Submitted: May 2014 2 Contents AKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 7 There’s no time like the past: Presenting the project .................................................................................................... 7 The retro age .................................................................................................................................................................. 7 The project and its means: Re-reading retro .................................................................................................................. 8 The structure of the dissertation ................................................................................................................................... 11 Defining retro and its context ........................................................................................................................................ 14 Retro: suggested definitions ......................................................................................................................................... 14 Retro as objects in context ........................................................................................................................................... 18 Retro as aesthetics ........................................................................................................................................................ 20 Authenticity, irony and nostalgia .................................................................................................................................. 22 Authenticity ................................................................................................................................................................. 22 Irony ............................................................................................................................................................................. 25 Nostalgia ...................................................................................................................................................................... 27 Introduction of related sensibilities: Kitsch, camp and cult ....................................................................................... 31 Kitsch ........................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Camp ............................................................................................................................................................................ 34 Cult .............................................................................................................................................................................. 36 The study of retro ........................................................................................................................................................... 38 CHAPTER 2: STUDYING RETRO: MATERIAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES THEORY AND METHOD ................................................................................................... 41 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................. 41 Doing with things ............................................................................................................................................................ 42 The retro object: from rubbish to riches? ..................................................................................................................... 42 Material Culture: The study of things .......................................................................................................................... 44 Things as Materializations ........................................................................................................................................... 49 The social life of things ................................................................................................................................................... 52 Bourdieu and the cultural object .................................................................................................................................. 53 Concepts of culture ......................................................................................................................................................... 57 Subculture: Resistance trough Bricolage ..................................................................................................................... 59 Post subculture? ........................................................................................................................................................... 64 Popular culture ............................................................................................................................................................. 66 Contemporary culture, identity and things .................................................................................................................. 72 Individuality and collectivity in contemporary culture ................................................................................................ 76 The retro object and its social context .......................................................................................................................... 78 Scenes .......................................................................................................................................................................... 78 Orvar Löfgren’s modern materiality ............................................................................................................................ 80 The retro object: selection and circulation ................................................................................................................... 81 Conclusion: The social life of modern things................................................................................................................ 83 3 CHAPTER 3: CULTURAL MEMORY: PASTNESS, TEMPORALITY, AND CULTURAL IDENTITY .......................................................................................................................... 85 Introduction: Retro as cultural memory ...................................................................................................................... 85 Cultural Memory Studies ............................................................................................................................................... 86 Halbwachs and the social frameworks of memory ...................................................................................................... 88 The Cultural Memory of Jan Assmann ........................................................................................................................ 90 History and memory between the canon and the archive ............................................................................................. 93 Lieu de mémoire : the objects of memory ..................................................................................................................... 95 “Present pasts”: Memory in contemporary culture .................................................................................................... 98 The things in the cultural memory: Between meaning and presence ......................................................................... 102 Conclusion: Retro and Cultural Memory ................................................................................................................... 104 CHAPTER 4: THE FRAMING OF THE FIFTIES: A READING OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF RETRO .......................................................................................... 106 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................
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