Gothic Nostalgia: The Uses of Toxic Memory in 21st Century Popular Culture (2024)

This book is an original and innovative study of how Gothic nostalgia and toxic memory

are used to underpin and promote the ongoing culture wars and populist politics in

contemporary popular culture. The essays collected here cover topics from the spectral to

the ecological, deep fakes to toxic ableism, Mary Poppins to John Wick to reveal

how the use of an imaginary past to shape the present, creates truly Gothic times that we

can never escape. These 'hungry ghosts' from the past find resonance with the Gothic

which speaks equally of a past that often not only haunts the present but will not let it

escape its grasp. This collection will look at the confluence between various kinds of toxic

nostalgia and popular culture to suggest the ways in which contemporary populism has

resurrected ideological monsters from the grave to gorge on the present and any possibility

of change that the future might represent.