According to popular media and scholarship, Detroit, the once-vibrant city that crumbled with the departure of the auto industry, is where dreams can be reborn. It is a place that, like America itself, is gritty and determined. It has faced the worst kind of adversity, and supposedly now it's back. But what does this narrative of "new Detroit" leave out? Beautiful Wasteland reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit's rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. They're not. As Rebecca J. Kinney shows, the narratives of Detroit's rise, decline, and potential to rise again are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness.

By remapping the narratives of contemporary Detroit through an extension of America's frontier mythology, Kinney analyzes a cross-section of twentieth and twenty-first century cultural locations-an Internet forum, ruin photography, advertising, documentary film, and print and online media. She illuminates how the stories we tell about Detroit as a frontier of possibility enable the erasure of white privilege and systemic racism. By situating Detroit as a "beautiful wasteland," both desirable and distressed, this shows how the narrative of ruin and possibility form a mutually constituted relationship: the city is possible precisely because of its perceived ruin.

Beautiful Wasteland tackles the key questions about the future of postindustrial America. As cities around the country reckon with their own postindustrial landscapes, Rebecca Kinney cautions that development that elides considerations of race and class will only continue to replicate uneven access to the city for the poor, working class, and people of color.

About the Author

Rebecca J. Kinney, who grew up in metropolitan Detroit, is assistant professor in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies and Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University.

Reviews

"Rebecca J. Kinney's sophisticated and compelling study demonstrates the centrality of race-making to contemporary narratives of urban decline and revitalization."-David M. P. Freund, University of Maryland

"This is a welcome addition to studies in race and political economy."-Katherine B. Hankins, Georgia State University

"In Beautiful Wasteland Rebecca Kinney offers a sweeping cultural analysis of the images and symbolic landscapes that have made and remade our imaginary of the city of Detroit."-Jessa M. Loomis, University of Kentucky

"Beautiful Wasteland is a superb analysis of the role of popular culture in the production of Detroit as a 'postindustrial frontier'."-Sara Safransky, Vanderbilt University

"Beautiful Wasteland adds greatly to our understanding of why nostalgia is such a central part of how white working and middle class Americans construct their sense of self and the world."-Patrick Vitale, Eastern Connecticut State University

"It's part personal memoir, part reporting, part academic dissection, drawing on life history, pop culture, photojournalism, architecture, TV news, and more."-Detroit Metro Times

"While modest in length and scope, Beautiful Wasteland provides a fascinating analysis of the cultural narratives that underpin both public policy and our everyday depictions of postindustrial cities."-The Michigan Historical Review

"Kinney's book is a valuable contribution to the growing body of research on Detroit in that it makes visible the banal ways in which racism occurs through a cultural lens."-Urban Geography

"Kinney's insistence that neoliberal market strategies cannot resolve structural inequities raises this succinct contribution to the critique of 'ruin porn' above the fray."-Indiana Magazine of History

"Crucially woven into this analysis is Kinney's sensitivity to the persistence of race in narrative tropes, and the significance of what is unsaid and what is forgotten, as much as what is said and remembered."-Environment & Urbanization

"Historical and cultural geographers plus scholars with an interest in the US Midwest, manufacturing history, or urban history will likely find this a welcome addition to their shelves - or night stands: the book was a compelling read and difficult to put down."-Historical Geography

Book Information
ISBN 9780816697571
Author Rebecca J. Kinney
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint University of Minnesota Press
Publisher University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 25mm