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Practical Nostalgia and the Critique of Commodification: On the ‘Death of Hockey’ and the National Hockey League

2002; Wiley; Volume: 13; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1835-9310.2002.tb00212.x

1835-9310

Philip Moore,

American Sports and Literature

This paper explores some uses of nostalgia in two accounts of ‘the death of hockey’ in the professional National Hockey League of North America. The two accounts examined offer critiques of the commodification of the game some 26 years apart, in 1972 and in 1998. The argument developed here is that nostalgia can be more than just a longing or a yearning for an unattainable golden era located some unspecified time in the past, when social life was well organised and clearly understood, but rather that nostalgia can also take on a tough critical edge when its practical uses are recognised and exploited. Couched as practical nostalgia, such interpretations of the past provide a vision that can be used as a way of creating a space for the development of a critique of the present and opening up possibilities for the future. In the public culture of hockey practical nostalgia can be used to articulate a theoretical approach for understanding the ongoing commodification of the game.