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“Smokestack Nostalgia,” “Ruin Porn” or Working-Class Obituary: The Role and Meaning of Deindustrial Representation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2014

Tim Strangleman
Tim Strangleman*
Affiliation:
University of Kent, UK
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Abstract

This article explores some of the visual imagery that has emerged from the process of deindustrialization. It seeks to understand the similarities and differences between post-industrial photography collected in book format in both North America and Europe and the critics of this genre. It makes sense of the value and meaning of this publishing trend and what it says about its market. While it would be easy to dismiss this material as “simply nostalgic,” representing another manifestation of “smokestack nostalgia,” this article suggests that we need a more nuanced account which asks questions about the continuing desire to reflect back and find value in the industrial past. In so doing it makes a contribution to a wider critical account of the role of cultural approaches to interpreting industrial change and working-class history.

Type
Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 84: Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory , Fall 2013 , pp. 23 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2013 

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Footnotes

1.

My thanks to Jeff Cowie, Steve High, Jack Metzgar and Sherry Linkon for their insightful and critical remarks on this article.

References

NOTES

2. Cowie, Jefferson and Heathcott, Joseph, eds., Beyond the Ruins: the Meanings of Deindustrialization (Ithaca, NY, 2003), 14Google Scholar.

3. Cowie and Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins, 15.

4. Dudley, Kate M., The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America (Chicago, 1994), 179Google Scholar.

5. Urban explorers are individuals or groups who visit industrial and other ruins and in the process often take still or moving images. For more details see Ninjalicious, Access All Areas: A User's Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration (Toronto, 2005)Google Scholar.

6. Clemens, Paul, Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant (New York, NY, 2011), 34Google Scholar.

7. Clemens, Punching Out, 253.

8. High, Steven and Lewis, David W., Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization (Ithaca, NY, 2007), 9Google Scholar.

9. Edensor, Tim, Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar. See also Trigg, Dylan, The Aesthetics of Decay: Nothingness, Nostalgia, and the Absence of Reason (New York, NY, 2006)Google Scholar; Vergara, Camilo J., American Ruins (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Woodward, Christopher, In Ruins (London, 2002)Google Scholar.

10. Zadoorian, Michael, The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit (Detroit, MI, 2009), 170Google Scholar.

11. Olsen, Byron and Cabadas, Joseph, The American Auto Factory (St. Paul, MN, 2009)Google Scholar.

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13. Bryan, Ford R., Rouge: Pictured in its Prime (Dearborn, MI, 2003)Google Scholar.

14. Davis, Michael W. R., Chrysler Heritage: A Photographic History (Chicago, IL, 2001)Google Scholar. See also Bardsley, Gillian and Corke, Colin, Making Cars at Longbridge: 100 Years in the Life of a Factory (Stroud, UK, 2006)Google Scholar.

15. Dublin, Thomas and Light, Walter, The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY, 2005)Google Scholar; Bamberger, Bill and Davidson, Cathy, Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (New York, NY, 1998)Google Scholar; Maharidge, Dale and Williamson, Michael, Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass (New York, NY, 1985)Google Scholar; see also Maharidge, Dale and Williamson, Michael, Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression (Berkeley, CA, 2011)Google Scholar.

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19. Marchand, Yves and Meffre, Romain, The Ruins of Detroit (Göttingen, 2011)Google Scholar; Austin, Dan and Doerr, Sean, Lost Detroit: The Stories Behind the Motor City's Majestic Ruins (Charleston, SC, 2010)Google Scholar; Moore, Andrew, Detroit Disassembled (Akron, OH, 2010)Google Scholar. Other examples can be seen in Margaine, Sylvain and Margaine, David, Forbidden Places: Exploring our Abandoned Heritage (Tours, France, 2009)Google Scholar; Dubowitz, Dan, Wastelands (Stockport, UK, 2010)Google Scholar; WG, Romany, Beauty in Decay (Darlington, UK, 2011)Google Scholar.

20. David Lee, in Introduction to Germain, Steelworks, 7.

21. For an example of Linkon's work, see her piece, “Narrating Past and Future: Deindustrialized Landscapes as Resources” in this issue.

22. Dicks, Bella, Heritage, Place and Community (Cardiff, 2000)Google Scholar: Nadel-Klein, Jane, Fishing for Heritage: Modernity and Loss Along the Scottish Coast (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar; Smith, Laura J., Uses of Heritage (London, 2006)Google Scholar.

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25. Bonnett, Alastair, Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia (London, 2010)Google Scholar; Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, NY, 2001)Google Scholar; Strangleman, Tim, “The Nostalgia of Organisations and the Organisation of Nostalgia: Past and Present in the Contemporary Railway Industry,” Sociology 33 (1999): 725–46Google Scholar.

26. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia.

27. Bonnett, Left in the Past.

28. Strangleman, “The Nostalgia of Organisations.” See also Strangleman, Tim, Work Identity and the End of the Line? Privatisation and Culture Change in the UK Rail Industry (Basingstoke, UK, 2004)Google Scholar.

29. It is important to note the centrality of Raphael Samuel and his ground-breaking intervention in terms of issues surrounding popular memory and heritage. Samuel, Raphael, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture. (London, 1994)Google Scholar. While he does mention nostalgia in the text, it is not as fully developed as it could be.

30. Germain, Steelworks.

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32. Fowler, Bridget, The Obituary as Collective Memory (London, 2007), 8Google Scholar.

33. Edensor, Industrial Ruins.

34. Steven High and David W. Lewis, Corporate Wasteland, 59–60.

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36. Edensor, Industrial Ruins, 16.

37. Dudley The End of the Line, 173.

38. Ian Roberts, ‘Collective “Representations, Divided Memory and Patterns of Paradox: Mining and Shipbuilding”, Sociological Research Online 12, 6, 6. http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/6/6.html (2007): 2.6.

39. Steven High and David W. Lewis, Corporate Wasteland, 24.

40. Bamberger and Davidson, Closing, 164.

41. In addition to the chapter title in Closing we can see this type of lament in other forms of writing, such as Chakrabortty's (2011) newspaper piece in the Guardian ‘Why doesn't Britain make things anymore?’ or in popular culture where an example would be The Wire and Frank Sobotka's a union organiser on the waterfront who laments: ‘We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket’, The Wire, Season 2.

42. Miller, Daniel, The Comfort of Things (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar.

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44. Lucic, Karen, Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine (London, 1991), 16Google Scholar.

45. Philip Levine in Moore, Detroit Disassembled, 114–115.

46. Samuel, Raphael, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture. (London, 1994), viiiGoogle Scholar.

47. Tim Strangleman, James Rhodes and Sherry Linkon, “Crumbling Culture: Deindustrialisation, Class and Work” this issue.

48. Whipps, Ming Jue.

49. Tim Strangleman, “The Remembrance of a Lost Work: Nostalgia, Labour and the Visual,” in Whipps, Ming Jue.

50. Samuel, Theatres of Memory, x.