Time at a Standstill

Loss, Accumulation, and the Past Conditional in an East Berlin Neighborhood

Bibliographic Data

ID2142608
AuthorsNitzan Shoshan (0000-0002-8374-7614, El Colegio de México, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume77
Issue1
Pages24-49
Publication date2012-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1844 • E-ISSN: 1469-588X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00141844.2011.580358
OpenAlexW2032600585
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited29

This article reconsiders the question of nostalgic consumption in East Germany as embedded not within a national or a regional (post-socialist) politics of time, as much literature has done, but rather within a global post-Fordist reconfiguration of the relation between time, consumption, and politics. Examining an underclass East Berlin neighborhood that has come to epitomize 'pastness', I show the salience of material prosperity - or its lack - in shaping the senses of time of its inhabitants. Especially for the younger generation, nostalgic commodities mediate the growing abyss between loss and accumulation, futures and pasts, nostalgic longings and unrealistic aspirations. I argue that the nexus of time, politics, and consumption has been transformed with the fading away of what has been called the future perfect (the political temporality of utopian projects) and its metamorphosis into what I term here the past conditional, the temporality of lost futures, irredeemable opportunities, and vanquished political imaginaries

Consumption (sociology · Economics · Epistemology · Futures contract · Nexus (standard · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Salience (neuroscience · Social science · Sociology · Temporalities · Temporality · Gender Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior · Philosophy · Urbanization and City Planning

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