Downton Abbey: Politics of Nostalgia, Neoliberalism, and Empire

This book examines the dramatic narrative and visual aesthetics of Downton Abbey to address the centrality of the power and privilege of an imperialist past in narrative structuring and to interrogate its broadly uncritical acceptance in an age where social and economic inequalities continue to run rampant. Ruhi Khan poses critical questions surrounding the meaning of nostalgic performance, the growing prevalence of injustice-inspired critique, and the underlying motives for circulating an idealized - and irrecoverable - past, juxtaposing the present-day media environment with that of legacy media and highlighting the construction of culture and ideology at the juncture of major changes in production, distribution, and consumption of popular culture through new communication technologies. Ultimately, Khan argues that previously-hegemonic ideology continues to be reconfigured and redeployed, even within contexts of apparent diversity, in service of the dominance of capitalist and neoliberal philosophies.