‘Another World Just out of Sight’: Remembering or Imagining Utopia in Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven

At the heart of Station Eleven lies a tension between remembering and imagining. Whereas most post-apocalyptic texts value their contemporary society by generating a sense of ‘nostalgia’ for the present, St. John Mandel’s novel places its emphasis on the imaginary and utopian possibilities that could accompany disaster. In the novel, a host of now useless objects become aesthetic links to the past, reminders collected by Clark in the Museum of Civilization; the Travelling Symphony’s productio...