Abstract
Ellis and Theus argue that The Return narrates the impossibility of representing history as something one returns to, as well as something which itself returns, affirming that the show’s third season poses a distinct challenge to existing models of conceiving of history as a series of representable events or as a space which can be eventually (re)occupied. In this sense, The Return becomes an epistemic problem staged over the course of more than two decades of American history rising in the years between Seasons Two and Three, both diegetic and off-screen. By treating the impossibility of history through this concept of the ‘return,’ the chapter brings together the insights of psychoanalytically oriented literature on Twin Peaks with the literature focused on televisual narrative and postmodernity.
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Ellis, M., Theus, T. (2019). Is It Happening Again? Twin Peaks and ‘The Return’ of History. In: Sanna, A. (eds) Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04798-6_2
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