Echoes of the Past: Nostalgia and the Utopian Spirit in Heather A. Swain’s Hungry (2014)

Abstract

Despite ongoing technological advancements and improving socio-economic conditions, the contemporary projections of the future are increasingly marked with uncertainty and anxiety rather than hope and optimism. As dependence on capitalism, consumerism, and digitization has led to commodification of life, the fragmentation of stable communities, and spiritual impoverishment, modern humans increasingly turn to historical and mythical pasts to compensate for their disillusionment with an unsatisfying present. With the daunting prospects of the things to come, nostalgia is being increasingly recognized by critics and artists alike as a powerful meaning-granting mechanism¾one that unlocks future possibilities rather than serving merely as a purely regressive and unproductive sentiment idealizing the past. But can nostalgia truly serve as the locus of future-oriented utopianism? Drawing on the theories of nostalgia (Svetlana Boym), retrotopia (Zygmunt Bauman), and mythophilia (Jeff Malpas), this paper analyzes the role of personal myths and collective nostalgias in igniting a utopian spirit in Heather Swain’s novel Hungry (2014). Set in a technologically saturated world where the Earth’s natural resources have been exhausted and flora and fauna decimated, the novel depicts a seemingly utopian social order in which synthetic nutrition and hormone-controlling inoculations introduced by the One World Corporation have eradicated physical hunger, saving humanity from global starvation. By juxtaposing individual endeavours with collective attempts to reclaim a past in which food functioned as both physical and spiritual sustenance, the novel warns against uncritical efforts to resurrect utopian models. Instead, it situates the utopian impulse within more reflective and creative personal practices that “look at the past critically and yearn for a different past, now, and desire a different future” (Baccolini 2007, 175).