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Popular Culture and Nostalgia
  • ISSN: 2045-5852
  • E-ISSN: 2045-5860

Abstract

From SARS to H1N1, and most recently COVID-19, global disease outbreaks have defined the past several decades. For many, we are living in what can only be described as a pre-apocalyptic moment. Indeed, we are currently facing a global pandemic outbreak – a situation that had been previously described as imminent and perhaps even long overdue. Consequently, the publication of pandemic narratives has increased exponentially, which exposes a heightened social concern about the risk of viral outbreak. But instead of speaking to these growing anxieties and providing models to interpret our current position, a growing body of popular culture post-apocalyptic fiction remains deeply entrenched in a dangerous nostalgia that undermines the construction of hypothetical models that could appropriately respond to these threats. I argue that these texts can therefore be read as , Louis Marin’s term for the false utopian myths that circulate within a society. A degenerate utopia is thus not really a utopia at all, but rather an ideology that elevates the past to a false state of perfection. My article examines the construction of degenerate utopian realities through collective memory in Emily St John Mandel’s and Peter Heller’s .

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2020-09-01
2026-02-14
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/content/journals/10.1386/ajpc_00031_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): degenerate utopia; memory studies; nostalgia; pandemic outbreak; post-apocalyptic fiction; utopian theory

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