A more perfect dissolution

Samuel D. Hunter’s 2019 play Greater Clements is named after a fictional former mining town in Northern Idaho, which straddles the space between presence and absence. The locals have decided to put an end to a dispute with the Californian second-homers that have flocked to town in recent years, by voting to unincorporate. Hunter has indicated that the play relies heavily on the “toxicity of nostalgia”, on which the present essay concentrates. This article explores nostalgia as connected to two marginalised communities in Greater Clements: the miners, now out of work due to the effects of deindustrialisation, and the town’s Japanese American residents, who are still reeling from the trauma of wartime internment.