Abstract

What does it mean to be literate in contemporary rhetorics of nostalgia? How can such knowledge lead to a better-designed world? From scrutinizing digital technologies of longing like Facebook’s On This Day to pursuing Afrofuturistic traditions toward neostalgic tomorrows, this essay surveys the human need to bathe in lost pasts, how such longing is coded into our lives, and how it can be activated by rhetoric students to design equitable futures. In doing so, I propose five tenets of nostalgic design, a making-centric approach to the rhetoric of memory that (1) interrogates technologies of nostalgia, (2) learns from user longings, (3) urges solidarity across a design’s lifespan, (4) fragments isolated traditions, and (5) surveys the past for lost futures. Within each movement, I both introduce defining features of the rhetoric of nostalgia and assignments that aid students in remaking the memory systems around them.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2021-10-20
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2021.1972133
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (3)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. College English
  3. College Composition and Communication
Also cites 19 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.5406/j.ctv1kmj88n
  2. 10.4324/9781315882970
  3. 10.2307/1511524
  4. 10.1080/10417949009372786
  5. 10.1080/00335639709384169
  6. 10.2752/155280105778055263
  7. 10.4324/9781315696676
  8. 10.1111/jopy.12505
  9. 10.2307/j.ctvb1hr23
  10. 10.1057/cpt.2015.49
  11. 10.1177/0146167201274008
  12. 10.1086/670238
  13. 10.1080/00335630009384308
  14. 10.1016/bs.aesp.2014.10.001
  15. 10.2307/358761
  16. 10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.053
  17. 10.1145/1868914.1868925
  18. 10.1080/15295030903176641
  19. 10.7208/chicago/9780226902098.001.0001
CrossRef global citation count: 1 View in citation network →