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The Reflective Age
Nostalgia at the End of History
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Zachary Griffith
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2026
About this book
At the end of history, nothing ever really ends. Though characterized, on one hand, by sociopolitical and economic stasis, stagnation, and decline, twenty-first century American culture has also been marked by the constant ebb and flow of preexisting artifacts and styles, so that when one fades out of fashion it is always replaced by another reiteration. Change, on the cultural level, has accelerated at an unprecedented rate, and old things are constantly returning anew. The present, in other words, promotes the feeling that nothing is changing and, simultaneously, everything is. In the midst of this paradoxical sense of constant flux and grinding stagnation, underwritten by the notion that there is no alternative to the malaise of the present, the nostalgic past emerges as the only viable refuge. The Reflective Age investigates how nostalgic American media of the 2010s and early 2020s reflects––and contributes to––these conditions, showing how the films, TV shows, music, and literature of the period illustrate a radical shift in both the role that nostalgia plays in the American cultural and political landscape as well as in nostalgia itself.
Author / Editor information
ZACHARY GRIFFITH is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky. This will be his first book.
Reviews
"In The Reflective Age, Griffith discerns kinship between such disparate works as Ready Player One, Stranger Things, and Hillbilly Elegy, all of which manage immediate economic discontents through retro fantasy. While contesting the cultural logic of nostalgia, his lucid, propulsive prose reaches toward the not yet lived."— Christopher Carter, author of The Rhetoric of Dystopia: Prophecies and Provocations in the Anthropocene
"While peering beneath the surfaces of contemporary film, television, and literature, Griffith makes a compelling argument that mediated nostalgia in the twenty-first century is a hall of mirrors endlessly reflecting back upon itself. Covering politics, history, and popular culture, The Reflective Age is a valuable addition to the multidisciplinary field of nostalgia studies."— Adam Ochonicky, author of The American Midwest in Film and Literature: Nostalgia, Violence, and Regionalism
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 31, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9781978843806
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781978843806
Keywords for this book
The Reflective Age; Nostalgia; End of History; American Media; 2010s; Sociopolitical Conditions; Francis Fukuyama; Mainstream Politics; Cultural Moment; Political Change; Progressive Future; Cultural Change; Neoliberalism; Dead Styles; Dormant Intellectual Property; Flux; Stagnation; No Alternative; Past as Refuge; Zachary Griffith; Nostalgic Media; Ready Player One; Ready Player Two; Stranger Things; Cultural Forces; Historically Unique Nostalgia; Political Contours; Sociocultural Logic; Post-Cold War Triumphalism; Neoliberal Rationality; Cultural vs. Social and Political; Economic Stagnation; Environmental Decline; American Capitalism; Political Punchline; Naive Presentism; Coherent Period; Nostalgia at the End of History; Recognition; Aesthetics; Fantasies of Repetition; Right-Wing Melodrama; Twin Peaks: The Return; Hillbilly Elegy; Bibliography; Index
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
