Dr Rebecca Bramall (University of Brighton)

As the credit crunch bites and the ecological crisis looms, popular cultural references to Second World War home front policies have become widespread, from ‘make do and mend’ to the return (in Jamie Oliver’s latest show) of the Ministry of Food. Perhaps most insistent is the call to ‘dig for victory’, a discourse that invokes memories of the wartime response to food shortages with a view to promoting ‘sustainable living’ today. My paper addresses this particular articulation of past to present in the context of debates in cultural studies about ‘ambivalent’ or anti-consumerism. I will focus in particular on the task of understanding the role of ‘memory’ and history in the constitution of new, potentially radical, subjectivities.

Dr Rebecca Bramall is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies in the School of Computing, Mathematical and Information Sciences.