Book, Retrotopia[LS]

Back to the past in the age of nostalgia Arising from the crisis of nation-states and the ever-widening gap between power and politics, retrotopia is the utopia of the past. We experience the complete loss of hope of achieving happiness in some idealized place in the future - like the famous island Utopia imagined by Thomas More -, which leads to a glorification of practices and projects from times past. This is the last book by Bauman, the great thinker of liquid modernity, who passed away in January 2017. Retrotopia dissects the current phenomenon of searching for a better world no longer in the future to be built, but in ideas and ideals from the past, such as exacerbated nationalism and border closures. Thus, nostalgia has become a defense mechanism in recent times. Grand plans of the past - abandoned but not dead - are being resurrected and rehabilitated as possible paths to a better world.