Modernism’s Hereafters

Abstract

Since their construction in the 1960s and 70s, the modernist mass housing and landscapes of Sweden and Denmark have served as both litmus tests and voodoo dolls for evolving ideas about the meaning of welfare. Persistent negative stories about these neighborhoods – what I call “hereafters” – have been held as truths, even when residents have repeatedly attempted to refute them. Today, the twin forces of stigmatization and state individualism lead to calls for their eradication, supporting forms of capitalism that profit from erasing and remaking them for private ownership.

In this talk, which comes from my forthcoming book, Modernism’s Hereafters: Reports from the Welfare City (University of Texas Press, 2027), I investigate the politics of making and unmaking such landscapes and the rhetorical strategies that make the necessity of their reform “common sense.” How did ideas of physically and socially bounded environments facilitate their historical and contemporary reception as “failed” and ripe for reconstruction?