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Article published In:
Voicing Absences/Presences in a Damaged World
Edited by Jessica Maufort and Marc Maufort
[English Text Construction 15:2] 2022
► pp. 156–174

A more perfect dissolution

Mining nostalgia in Samuel D. Hunter’s Greater Clements

| Erasmushogeschool Brussel
Samuel D. Hunter’s 2019 play Greater Clements is named after a fictional former mining town in Northern Idaho, which straddles the space between presence and absence. The locals have decided to put an end to a dispute with the Californian second-homers that have flocked to town in recent years, by voting to unincorporate. Hunter has indicated that the play relies heavily on the “toxicity of nostalgia”, on which the present essay concentrates. This article explores nostalgia as connected to two marginalised communities in Greater Clements: the miners, now out of work due to the effects of deindustrialisation, and the town’s Japanese American residents, who are still reeling from the trauma of wartime internment.
Keywords: contemporary American drama, deindustrialisation, Idaho, Japanese Americans, nostalgia, toxicity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Into a dissolving world
  • 2.Restoring ruins
  • 3.Hidden pasts, wayward futures
  • 4.Conclusion: Home and the art of “seeing double”
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 June 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00055.mic
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