Abstract:
Airstream brand travel trailers from the 1950s and 60s have developed a
subculture dedicated to their preservation and use. This subculture serves as a case study
for how nostalgia, defined in a postmodern context, may promote preservation and
creative communion with the past. After examining criticisms of preservation’s focus on
material integrity, the discussion focuses on the need to factor user-based relationships
into historic preservation. A postmodern reexamination of nostalgia defines it not merely
as a longing for the past but also as a form of social critique which seeks to mitigate
modernity with the past. Mid-century Airstream preservation reflects a desire to revive
specific, positive values of the past in order to ameliorate the future and form temporal
continuity. For the mid-century Airstream subculture, nostalgia fosters both restoration
and recreation, allowing for an iconic emblem of the past to function in the present rather
than fade into obsolescence.