Siobhan Lyons perceives the flow of history in terms of organic growth and decay.
Our contemporary obsession with modern ruins, ambiguously dubbed ‘ruin porn’, has a tendency to trivialise the importance of such sites, which appear out of phase with our normal experience of the present. In her book Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of Places Not Yet Forgotten (2015), historian Kate Brown talks instead of ‘rustalgia’ (cf nostalgia). For Brown, while some people speak of their ‘lustful’ attraction to such sites, “others will speak in mournful tones of what is lost, what I call rustalgia” (p.149). Rustalgia both transforms and transports us, underpinning the more philosophical elements of these places, while ‘ruin porn’ makes them into nothing more than objects to gape at. She thinks her term and what it draws attention to will help us understand how “sketchy is the longstanding faith in the necessity of perpetual economic growth.”
Focusing On The Future
This story is from the December 2017 / January 2018 edition of Philosophy Now.
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This story is from the December 2017 / January 2018 edition of Philosophy Now.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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